The Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti (HABSS) has challenged the revocation of the Community Forest Rights (CFRs) title granted to Ghatbarra village in Chhattisgarh, terming it ‘troubling’ and ‘deeply disappointing’.
The directives of the Chhattisgarh High Court’s single-judge bench to dismiss the petition is probably the first instance in India when a CFR title has been cancelled, HABSS said in a press statement issued by the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan on October 23.
The court, in its order on October 8, agreed in principle about the points raised by HABSS. However, it carved out exceptions on the grounds of technicality and specific pleadings. “The judgement questioned the locus of the petitioners – HABSS – and wrongly noted that no documents had been filed to show that the petitioners were residents of Ghatbarra village,” the statement said. It added that this was in deep disregard to the individual affidavits from petitioners, and a resolution signed by over 200 residents of Ghatbarra, authorising representation by the HABSS.
As the dispute focussed on forest rights recognised against a community — the Community of the Gram Sabha of Ghatbarra village — each member of the village community became a rights holder and had the locus to challenge their revocation. If residents of the same village did not have the locus to challenge an order cancelling rights that directly accrued to them, who else would?
Citing an example, it added that the court also ignored the fact that this was an altogether different matter — associated with a different coal block with different petitioners from Fattepur as stakeholders and not Ghatbarra — making it a different dispute altogether of land acquisition and not forest rights.
By this logic, the petitioners would not be able to seek relief as no case would be adjudicated since that would require clearing all pending cases across India before any specific matter is considered for relief.
The conveners said the court noting that since a long time has passed and large areas de-forested, the individual or CFR claims of the residents of Ghatbarra village can be compensated in terms of money is worrisome. This is because it validates the illegality merely on the grounds of the time lapsed.
It further reduces the issue of CFR to mere compensation. The statement added, “It’s a bit surprising that the court presumes that there may be a legitimate reason for CFR claims even as it rejects and invalidates the CFR title that was actually granted.”
The statement underlines that the court failed to adjudicate whether the coal block possessed a valid forest clearance considering that National Green Tribunal had already set aside the forest clearance and the company’s appeal against the same with the NGT order in the Supreme Court also being withdrawn.
The court also failed to acknowledge that the company had not presented Gram Sabha consent for forest land diversion — a mandatory legal condition for forest clearances. Instead, the court asked pointed questions on why the village residents did not challenge the coal block allocation, the statement said.
Such precedent, if applied to further cases, could threaten the very foundations of natural justice embedded in India’s constitutional and legal processes, the conveners said.
They said the law governing coal block allocation offers no role for intervention by village residents and that mere allocation does not provide unconditional rights to the mining company to become a hindrance in recognition of forest rights of forest-dwelling communities residing in the coal block area.
The order further creates disproportionate and insurmountable burden on the local communities to protect their rights, enabling companies to trespass them with limited compliance requirements
Fundamentally, this also reduces the forest clearance and/or the Gram Sabha consent to an empty formality, the conveners said.
“The court order has set back the struggle to acknowledge and recognise the rights of tribal and forest-dwelling population by several decades. For the first time, it ends up legalising the cancellation of a forest right title, which was supposed to be a mere recognition of pre-existing historical rights of local communities, rather than grant of a fresh right. It also creates a process and a dangerous precedent for mining companies to deliberately circumvent the forest rights of local communities,” the statement read.
By upholding the cancellation of the petitioners’ substantive forest rights on technical grounds of delays and laches, the court has re-enacted the same “historical injustice” against forest- dwelling communities that the Forest Rights Act set out to address 20 years ago.
An Adivasi village in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh, Ghatbarra was one of the first villages in the state to receive recognition of CFR and get verified by the District Level Forest Rights Committee (DLC) of the state government in the year 2013.
The title awarded was for three CFRs spanning across 810 ha of forest land — the rights to collect firewood, graze animals and collect minor forest produce from the forest, the statement said.
About 60 per cent of the annual income is earned by villagers of the Hasdeo Arand area from these activities, according to a 2021 report by the Wildlife Institute of India.
Recognition of these forest rights is critical to ensure their right to livelihood and cultural identity.
Unfortunately, Ghatbarra village also falls within the Parsa East Kete Basen (PEKB) coal block, which is being operated by a joint venture company with Adani Enterprises as the majority owner.
The statement claimed that without the settlement of forest rights, and with no consent from the associated Gram Sabhas, the forest clearance was granted to this project in 2012 — one year before the recognition of the CFR title. The clearance allowed it to mine the forest area in two phases, with the forest adjoining Ghatbarra village included in the second phase. This was clearly in violation of the central government’s own order requiring settlement of all forest rights, as well as prior consent from the Gram Sabhas for the mining project.
“Even though the mining company was in possession of an invalid Forest Clearance, it complained to the District Level Forest Rights Committee that the recognition of Community Forest Rights of Ghatbarra was erroneous since it overlooked the prior Forest Clearance in favour of the mining company. Further, it complained that the community forest rights title was proving to be an obstacle to mining operations. The DLC obliged by promptly revoking the CFR Title in 2016. It is this revocation that was challenged before the High Court by the HABSS,” the statement said.
It underlined that till date, the mining company has been unable to produce a single Gram Sabha resolution in favour of diverting the Ghatbarra forest land for mining, a mandatory requirement for obtaining a valid forest clearance.