From 2012, Odisha saw steep fall in recgnition of FRA claims: study

Odisha has seen a drastic decline in recognition of forest right claims over the last eight years, a study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai has found.

The report also says that there is a huge gap between the minimum potential forest areas to be recognised under the Forest Rights Act and recognised forest areas as of April 30 — even 13 years after its implementation.

“The recognised forest areas are only 12.58% of the minimum potential areas to be recognised under the Act. With the current pace of recognition of forest areas, it will take close to nine decades to saturate the recognition of the minimum potential forest areas in the state,” the report states.

A total of 4,52,781 forest rights claims had been recognised as of April 30 — but over 83% of these had been recognised by the end of 2012 itself, pointing to a steep decline.

Forest rights claims can fall under two categories — individual forest rights (IFR) and community forest rights (CFR).

The recognition and rejection ratio of the total IFR claims filed come around 71% and 13% respectively, while that of CFR accounts for 46% and 7% respectively. “Hence, these ratios imply that for every 10 claims filled for IFR, around 7 to 8 claims were accepted while for CFR, every 10 claims filed only 4 to 5 claims were accepted. Furthermore, the low rejection rates in the CFR are only the result of a higher number of pending cases which accounts for 48%. Similarly, the IFR constitutes 98.74% of the total rejected claims which is far higher than that of CFR which accounts for 1.26% only,” the study says.

A district-wise analysis further shows huge gaps between districts due to pending claims and higher rejection.

The report found that most Schedule V districts, or districts with a relatively higher proportion of tribal population, have high IFR recognition rates.

But not a single CFR claim was recognised in seven districts. These are Sundargarh (0/474), Baleswar (0/164), Kendrapada (0/145), Subarnapur (0/91), Khorda (0/30), Jajapur (0/26), and Puri (0/2).