According to a recent report, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) has flagged alleged discrepancies with respect to the forest clearance granted for the Great Nicobar Island (GNI) Project.
Key points
- Citing alleged violations under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, among others, it has issued a notice to district authorities in Andaman and Nicobar islands on grounds that the project will significantly affect the rights of local tribespeople and that the NCST was not consulted.
- The implementation reports prepared by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs show that the island administration neither recognised nor granted ownership of any forest land to local tribespeople as per FRA, a requisite step under the Forest Conservation Rules, 2017, before Stage-I clearance is granted.
- The project being implemented by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO), includes a transshipment port, airport, power plant and greenfield township.
- The project intends to use about 7.114 sq. km of tribal reserve forest land, where the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), and the Nicobarese reside. It insisted that locals will not be displaced for the project.
- According to Rule 6(3)(e) of Forest Conservation Rules-2017 (FCR), any diversion of forest land would first require the District Collector to recognise and vest rights to locals under the FRA. Only then do the rules permit authorities to seek consent of the now-rights-holding gram panchayats for the diversion of this land – a provision envisioned to give primacy to rights of indigenous forest-dwelling communities.
- The justification of the administration has been that the islands have the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Act, 1956 (PAT56). This already provides for the “full protection of the interests” of forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes.
- Under the PAT56, a significant portion of the forest land in Great Nicobar has been marked as a Tribal Reserve, over which local tribespeople have been given rights to use and collect resources as and when needed for their daily sustenance.
- The power of notification and de-notification of the land as a Tribal Reserve is solely with the administrator of the islands under PAT56.
- The FRA provides for the recognition of wider community rights over forest land. The legislation allows forest communities the right to control and manage the use of the forest land over which they hold titles and their consent is mandatory for diverting it.
