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Forest rights experts have raised concern over a July 27 central government letter on Community Forest Resource Management Plans.
The letter asks states to align community forest resource plans with approved forest department Working Plans.
Experts say the move could weaken the authority of Gram Sabhas, which the Forest Rights Act recognises as the primary institution for determining and managing community forest rights.
Forest rights advocates say earlier guidelines since 2021 have increasingly shifted decision-making towards forest department and district-level administrative structures.
Experts have raised concern over a recent central government communication on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA), saying it could weaken the authority of Gram Sabhas over community forest rights.
The July 27, 2026 letter, jointly issued by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, asks state-level monitoring committees to prepare action plans for Community Forest Resource Management Plans (CFRMP). It says these plans should be prepared “in consonance with the approved Working Plans” and integrated with them. Working Plans are forest management plans prepared by forest departments.
The letter frames the move as convergence of resources available under central and state schemes, including forestry funds, since Community Forest Resource Rights areas are often located within larger forest landscapes.
The government says such convergence can help forestry funds complement and strengthen community forest management. But forest rights researchers and advocates say the communication risks subordinating the statutory authority of Gram Sabhas to an administrative forest governance framework.
Y Giri Rao of the National Resource Centre for Rights, Conservation and Climate Justice said that, if treated as binding, the communication would be “ultra vires”, or beyond the legal powers of the issuing authorities. It appeared to place statutory community forest rights and the authority of Gram Sabhas under an administrative forest governance regime, he said.
C R Bijoy, who examines resource conflicts and governance issues, based in Tamil Nadu, said that instead of the Gram Sabha protecting, conserving, managing and regulating the forest, wildlife and biodiversity as required under section 5 of the FRA, such communications signals to the bureaucracy to take de facto control of the Community Forest Resources (CFR) area. “In effect, it hits at the core of FRA and defies the Parliament which had enacted the law,” he said.
Under the section 6 (1) of the Act, Rule 4 clearly states that the Gram Sabha is the primary authority to initiate the process of determination of forest rights by receiving, verifying and passing resolutions on the claims, Bijoy added.
“It includes demarcating of the customary and traditional boundary of the territory falling within its jurisdiction for the explicit purpose of protecting, conserving, regulating and managing the forests, wildlife and biodiversity,” he said.
Bijoy added in order to carry out these functions, the Gram Sabha is to constitute committees under the provisions of the FRA.
The Forest Rights Act was enacted to recognise and vest forest rights in forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers, and to correct what the law describes as historical injustice. Giri said the law was meant to restore a rights-based, community-centred governance model rooted in local traditions, culture and ecology.
He said the July 27 letter, along with earlier guidelines, appeared to over-empower the Forest Department and make the National Working Plan Code, 2023, the basis for Community Forest Resource Management Plans. “This reframes a rights-based law into a management scheme, transforming community sovereignty into bureaucratic supervision,” he said.
He added that forcing community forest rights into administrative and forestry planning frameworks risked reducing forest dwellers from rights-holders and protectors to beneficiaries of state schemes.
The National Resource Centre for Rights, Conservation and Climate Justice is planning to submit a memorandum to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, urging it to uphold the spirit of the Forest Rights Act.
The July 27 letter follows a series of communications on community forest rights. In June 2021, the two ministries issued a joint communication calling for greater convergence between departments. It said frontline forest staff should assist Community Forest Resource Management Committees in preparing conservation and management plans, and that forest departments should integrate these plans with departmental micro plans or Working Plans.
In September 2023, the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs issued guidelines on the conservation, management and sustainable use of Community Forest Resources. These replaced a 2015 guideline issued under Section 12 of the Forest Rights Act, which forest rights advocates say gave Gram Sabhas greater autonomy to prepare and implement their own management plans.
The 2023 guidelines introduced District Level Community Forest Resource Monitoring Committees, which critics say are not prescribed under the Act or its Rules. They also require authorisation from the district-level committee for a Gram Sabha to open a current bank account to operate a Community Forest Resource management plan.
A March 2024 joint communication further described CFR management plans as “scientific documents” requiring field data collection and analysis. It said the chairperson of a Community Forest Resource Management Committee may co-opt a local forest department officer to help prepare such plans.
Furthermore, it stated that the tribal affairs ministry “plans to develop a few model CFR management plans, in consonance with the National working plan code, 2023 and share them with the states.”
In May 2024, the environment ministry also wrote to state principal chief conservators of forests, asking them to consider sharing digitised forest boundary maps with state tribal departments on a priority basis.
The letter said the maps, in shapefile format, would help state tribal departments develop a Forest Rights Act atlas to identify potential forest areas that could be covered under the law.
But forest rights advocates say such maps have not been shared in practice. They argue that any mapping exercise must follow the legal definition of forest, which includes reserve lands, deemed forests and unclassed forests, in addition to notified forest areas.
