BHUBANESWAR : The relocation of forest-dwelling tribals from the tiger reserves in Odisha and 17 other states has been flagged by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), one of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies.
Odisha is one among the 18 states where tribals are being displaced from tiger reserves, the allegations of which have been received by CERD under its ‘early warning and urgent action procedure’ with regard to the situation of tribal and forest-dwelling indigenous people in India.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had in June last year, asked the then chief wildlife warden to look into relocation of villages from the core/critical tiger habitat areas of the two tiger reserves in the state under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. The law mandates that core or critical tiger habitat areas of national parks and sanctuaries are kept inviolate for tiger conservation. NTCA had also pointed out that the village relocation process has been very slow.
Odisha has two tiger reserves - Satkosia and Similipal. As per the NTCA reports, the number of villages in the core areas in Satkosia was five (having 157 families) and nine in Similipal (311 families), as on May 27, 2024.
The number of villages relocated from the core area since the inception of Project Tiger is one (78 families) in Satkosia and four (247 families) in Similipal. The number of villages remaining in the core areas of both the reserves is 9 and families is 143.
In a letter to the ambassador and permanent representative of India to the UN office at Geneva, Arindam Bagchi, the CERD recently pointed out that the order violates the safeguards and standards of the domestic legal framework, under Section 38V (5) of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and Section 4(2) of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006.
The violations, it said, pertain to the incomplete process of recognising and determining the rights and acquisition of land of the tribal and forest-dwelling indigenous people, the lack of evidence that their activities or their presence can cause irreversible damage and threaten the existence of tigers and their habitat, the absence of confirmation that other reasonable options of co-existence are not available, and lack of available resettlement or alternative packages to impacted communities.
CERD chairperson Michal Balcerzak expressed concern that the allegations regarding the order issued by NTCA, if verified, would infringe rights protected of the tribals under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). It has sought information on the allegations from the Centre by August 1.