EFFECTIVENESS OF FRA IN MADHYA PRADESH

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, popularly called FRA, 2006, was enacted to recognize and vest the forest rights and occupation in forest land in forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes(STs) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers(OTFDs). The Act became effective from 01 January, 2008. Broadly, all rights can be grouped into three different categories viz, Individual Rights (IR), Community Rights(CR), and Community Forest Resources Rights (CFR). As more than six lakh claims were filed for different categories of rights in Madhya Pradesh and mostly for IR, the present study has been conducted to assess whether all three types of rights guaranteed by the FRA have been recognized and proper approaches followed.The studycarried out in six districts of Madhya Pradesh viz. Chhindwara, Mandla, Badwani, Khargone, Shahdol and Sidhhi reveals that the major thrust by the State has been on recognising Individual Rights while other two categories of rights have not received much attention. Although, recognition process has followed defined approaches yet many gaps were noticed.