JAIPUR : Oblivious to the Supreme Court putting on hold its earlier order to evict such tribals from forest reserves who could not furnish land deeds, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, pleading for an ordinance with necessary amendments in Forest Rights Act, 2006, to allow them to retain their homesteads.
Some 36,000 tribal families in Rajasthan would have been affected by the order, had the SC not stopped its operation. According to the 2006 forest rights act, Scheduled Tribes and other people living in the forest were to be given land deeds by respective governments. Rajasthan received 76, 553 requests but only 38, 323 scheduled tribe families could prove that they were living on their ancestral land.
The applications of 36401 families were rejected and the SC order would have ensured their eviction.
The chief minister said, “The state government has initiated the process of giving rights to the ST community as promised in party manifesto and reviewing the rejected applications”.