Adilabad Collector D. Divya, on Wednesday, assured tribals in the district of community forest rights (CFR) to respective villages by the government so that the communities concerned can manage forests.
She allayed the fear of tribals that they would be restricted from entering forests for grazing their domestic animals as the Forest department has demarcated village limits and forest boundaries recently.
Remove stones
The assurance was given at Kannapur village in Sirikonda mandal, while she was addressing Adivasis.
Raj Gond elder Sidam Bheem Rao had earlier, appealed to her and to the Forest department, represented by District Forest Officer (DFO) B. Prabhakar, to remove the stones which the latter had erected for delineating village and forest boundaries.
Mr. Bheem Rao, on his part, assured that villagers would protect the forests and did not want a repeat of 1964, when an entire village was razed by the Forest department as it was an illegal entity in the reserve forest.
Both the Collector and DFO vowed that no harm would befall their village and the CFRs would ensure they have proper forest rights.
Mr. Divya appealed to the villagers to cultivate food grains, especially their traditional millets, instead of cotton and asked each family to plant 10 mahua trees. She also promised to set up solar electricity in their village.