By P.S. Anantharaman, IANS
Ahmedabad : The Supreme Court’s recent order restraining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat from vesting ownership rights over forest land to tribals can also impact the state’s opposition Congress amid a tussle for votes in the state’s forest belt.
Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Oct 2 handed over pattas or ownership rights to 30 tribals in a symbolic move pre-empting the central government, but the apex court Friday directed the state to immediately cancel the pattas as the announcement violated its orders.
Modi’s move was in keeping with the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006, which was passed by parliament in December 2006, but is yet to be notified.
The Supreme Court’s restraint order was seen as a setback for Modi, but the Congress too stands to lose.
The Congress has been exhorting tribals to claim their rights on forest land in a campaign since January with a view to regain its dominant position in the tribal belt of the state.
According to Congress sources, the party had distributed application forms for land ownership rights among 30,000 tribal families in Sabarkantha district and 13,000 families have already filled up the forms, providing details of the land they live on and the land they cultivate.
The families are expecting the Congress to help them gain rights over the plots, but the apex court order has applied brakes on the party’s efforts.
Madhusudan Mistry, the Congress MP from Sabarkantha, however, does not think that the court order will affect the party’s campaign.
He said the filled-up application forms had been sent to the state government for the grant of rights.
“At any rate, we will confer the land rights to the tribals when we form the government,” Mistry told IANS.
Both the BJP and the Congress have taken up the land rights issue with an eye on the tribal votes.
While people in the forested regions in Dahod and Panchmahals districts along the state’s border with Madhya Pradesh traditionally voted for the Congress, the party lost ground in the December 2002 assembly polls when the BJP defeated it on all the 13 seats there in the aftermath of communal violence in the state.
Modi’s decision to grant pattas was part of a two-pronged strategy to retain his hold over the tribal belt in the next assembly poll, due by December.
The first part of the strategy was a Rs.150 billion package for the development of the tribal belt, which was announced after Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s visit to Devgadh Baria near Dahod drew a huge crowd early this year.
The second element of the strategy was to grant ownership rights to tribals if the central government did not do so.
In his Independence Day address at Mehsana, the chief minister had declared that the state had sent to the centre many applications seeking ownership rights to tribals but there had been no response. He then declared that if the centre did not give its nod by Oct 2, his government would take steps to grant the pattas on its own.