8 August :Over 8 lakh claims have been received by the various States for allocation of land under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of forest Rights) Act. The claims are under various stages of verification.
According to the reports received by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs from the various States. All the States have constituted various committees at State, District and Sub-Divisional levels for verification of claims as prescribed under the Act. Translation of the Act and the rules has been done in the regional languages and has been distributed to Gram Sabhas and forest Rights Committees. Awareness programme about the provisions of the Act and training up of the field level workers for speedy implementation of the Act have bee taken up. States have also organized sensitization workshop for the employees involved implementation of the Act. Monitoring format for implementation of the Act has been developed for weekly and monthly monitoring of the implementation.
As per reports received as on 31st July, 2008, in Andhra, about 2.28 lakh claims have been received from tribals and forest dwellers for allotment of about 6.6 lakh acre land. In Chhattisgarh, about 2.5 lakh claims have been received and are under verification at various levels. In Gujarat, 33,185 individual and 425 community claims were received by the Forest Rights Committee. While in Madhya Pradesh, over 1.30 claims were reported to be at the last stage of finalization. Maharashtra Government has reported that by September titles of the land are expected to be given in the case of 75,000 claims received by the State till July. In Orissa, 77,894 claims have been received and are being verified. While, West Bengal Government has reportedly received 20 claims. Process of inviting claims and their verification is in progress in other States also.