PM Modi paying 'lip service' to Adivasis' cause, govt denying them justice, says Congress

The Congress on Friday accused the Centre of going full throttle on attempts to deny Adivasis justice and said the Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan DAJGUA was a full mockery of the Forest Rights Act illustrating the governments hypocrisy reported news agency PTIThe Opposition party also claimed that DAJGUA in typical Manuvadi fashion only sees these communities as forestdwelling vanvasis who are labhaartis beneficiaries rather than political and economic actors in their own rightCongress general secretary incharge communications Jairam Ramesh said today is the 150th birth anniversary of Dharti Aaba Bhagwan Birsa Munda one of the greatest sons of India and a fierce advocate of selfgovernance and social justiceThe nonbiological PM is in Jamui Bihar paying lip service to the cause of the Adivasis on this occasion even as his Government goes full throttle on attempts to deny Adivasis justice Ramesh alleged in a statement reported PTIThe Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan DAJGUA named after Bhagwan Birsa Munda but a full mockery of the Forest Rights Act illustrates this hypocrisy he said reported PTIRamesh said the Forest Rights Act FRA 2006 passed by the Manmohan Singhs government was a revolutionary law and it transferred power and authority over forests from the forest department to the gram sabha reported PTIIn another departure from precedent the Ministry of Tribal Affairs was empowered as the nodal authority to implement the law he pointed outThe FRA empowered the Adivasi community and gram sabhas to govern and manage forests as a major reform to ensure democratic governance of forests Ramesh saidAfter the revolution however came Narendra Modis counterrevolutionDAJGUA fundamentally undoes this historic law and the democratic reform in forest governance he claimedRamesh said it dilutes the authority of Ministry of Tribal Affairs by giving authority to the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change in the implementation of FRARather than empower the FRAs statutory bodies namely the gram sabha the subdivisional committee the district level committee and the state level monitoring committee DAJGUA has created a vast parallel institutional mechanism of FRA cells at the district and subdivisional levels and arming them with large funds and contractual staff he pointed outThey are directly under the centralised bureaucratic control of Ministry of Tribal Affairs and State Tribal Welfare Departments and lack accountability to the FRAs statutory bodiesDAJGUA empanels and engages technical agenciesdomain experts corporate NGOs for the FRA implementation and CFR management activities of the gram sabhas by the State Tribal Welfare Departments he saidRamesh argued that these FRA cells are to take over what the FRA statutory bodies are required to do by law leaving these statutory bodies to be appendages to these FRA Cells nominal bodies reduced to carrying out the biddings of these FRA cells he saidThis has been done without attention to the economic and social sensitivities involved even as a massive budget has been allocated for this Rs 1 lakh for the technical agencies for each CFR For example in Madhya Pradesh the BJP government engaged the Maharashtra Knowledge Company Limited MKCL to create the VanMiTRA app which made the transparent process of submitting FRA claims into an obscure online process that technical operators took charge of he saidThree lakh claims were rejected as a result he addedAdivasi groups are justifiably worried about the same happening at a large scale due to the engagement of such tech agencies Ramesh saidThe forest department has now been allowed to be a part of the gram sabhas own committee for management of community forest resources a direct violation of the FRA Ramesh saidThe FRA was enacted for empowering Adivasi and forestdwelling communities to govern and manage their resources DAJGUA in typical Manuvadi fashion only sees these communities as forestdwelling vanvasis who are labhaartis rather than political and economic actors in their own right he allegedAs captured in the Adivasi Sankalp unveiled by Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Nandurbar Maharashtra on the 12th of March 2024 the Congress is committed to the honest and fair implementation of the FRA Ramesh assertedIt is part of our guarantees to the people in both Jharkhand and Maharashtra and will continue to be a priority for upcoming assembly and parliamentary elections he stressedTagging his statement Ramesh said on X As the nonbiological PM pays lip service to the Adivasi cause by celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Dharti Aaba Bhagwan Birsa Munda today in Jamui we should not be fooled his Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan DAJGUA is nothing but an absolute mockery of the revolutionary Forest Rights Act 2006 and Adivasi selfgovernanceWith inputs from PTI