Tribal Herders in Kulgam Invoke FRA to Reclaim Land Seized After 2019

Srinagar: A group of tribal herders in the Kulgam district have turned to the law to challenge one of the most controversial policies adopted by the Union government in Jammu and Kashmir following the reading down of Article 370 in 2019.

Invoking the Forest Rights Act (FRA), a group of pastoralists from Kulgam’s Halan area have staked claim to some 60 square kilometres of protected forest that the Union territory (UT) administration allegedly ‘seized’ from them in 2020.

The development assumes significance against the backdrop of the UT administration’s push to remove alleged encroachments from forest land that has served as the home of local tribal communities for centuries.

These 'anti-encroachment drives' have escalated sharply since the reading down of Article 370, with opposition parties alleging that what the government calls a crackdown on illegal occupation is in fact a systematic campaign to deprive the people of J&K of their land and livelihoods.

Zahid Pervez Chaudhary, a Gujjar activist, said that a gram sabha was held at a government school in Pachkhul Jaba, Halan, on May 2 and attended by dozens of Gujjar and Bakarwal people along with other tribal leaders and activists.

Chaudhary told The Wire that a resolution making a collective claim on the forest under FRA provisions was drafted by the Forest Rights Committee (FRC) during the meeting, which was later approved by the gram sabha.

The FRC processes claims made under the FRA, following which a gram sabha verifies them and recommends the case to the sub-divisional committee, and finally to the divisional-level committee. “Most claims are rejected at the gram sabha level because they are found to be false,” a forest department official said.

Ishaq Khokhar, a tribal activist and FRC secretary, said the issue dates back to 2020, when authorities barred some 45 tribal families in the Jaba and Lonepora areas of Halan from returning to their traditional mud-and-wood houses called kothas, accusing them of encroaching on the forest land.

This development took place a year after Article 370 was read down, when a massive eviction drive against the alleged land encroachments across J&K sparked public outcry. At that time, the administration’s assurance that only those individuals holding significant chunks of land illegally would be targeted failed to allay popular anger.

Khokhar alleged that the department erected a fence around the two areas, preventing pastoralist families and their livestock from returning to their summer homes. A freshwater spring that catered to locals’ needs was also allegedly clogged with rocks and soil, a charge denied by officials.

In mid-spring, the nomadic tribals of J&K traditionally begin to migrate into higher reaches, where they raise livestock for some six months before descending to the plains ahead of winter.

“At that time, in 2020, we had no idea what the FRA was,” Khokhar said. “A school was constructed in 2007 where around 300 children study, but the forest department is now pressuring us to shut it down. This is why we decided to take legal recourse.”

The FRA or The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, grants members of a “forest dwelling Scheduled Tribe or other traditional forest dwellers” the right to “hold and live on the forest land under individual or common occupation for habitation or self-cultivation for livelihood.”

The act also recognises nomadic tribal communities' rights of ownership, access to collect, use and dispose of minor forest produce, access to traditional pasturelands and the right to protect, regenerate, conserve or manage any community forest resources. Importantly, Section 4 (5) of the FRA states that no forest-dwelling member can be evicted or restricted from their occupied land until the rights recognition process is complete.

A senior forest department official said that a detailed survey and demarcation exercise of forest boundaries was carried out post-2019 developments in J&K to identify alleged encroachments. He added that no government official participated in the gram sabha at Halan and only those claims with a cut-off date of December 13, 2005, are being regularised. “All their claims have been rejected by the department,” he said.

Another official explained that alleged encroachers are issued notices under section 79-A of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, followed by eviction drives. “The retrieved land is fenced, any illegal structures on it are demolished and the forest is restored to its original status through various reforestation schemes,” he said.

Prasanna Ramaswamy G., secretary of J&K’s tribal affairs department, told The Wire that he will look into the matter. The department was appointed nodal agency of FRA implementation in J&K in December last year. A UT-level monitoring committee, comprising deputy commissioners and officials from the forest and revenue department and headed by the chief secretary, has been tasked with scrutinising and giving final approval to FRA claims.

Chaudhary, who is also the state president of a tribal students’ association, claimed that the government officials did not follow due legal process and that local tribals were not consulted before the land was taken over in Halan in 2020.

The resolution passed by the gram sabha, and signed by the FRC Halan chairman Abdul Majid Shah, secretary Bashir Ahmad Thoker and panchayat secretary, urges the government to reopen the pastures and allow residents to return to their homes which have been locked since 2020. “The current closure is a direct violation of statutory protections and severely impacts our traditional livelihoods,” the resolution states.

According to official data tabled in the J&K assembly, 39,898 claims made under the FRA have been rejected by the government against only 6,097 approvals.

The FRA makes it incumbent on the government to divert under one hectare forest land, on the recommendation of the gram sabha, for the construction of public facilities such as schools, hospitals and irrigation canals.

The Halan gram sabha resolution accordingly urges the government to set up a high school at Pachkhul Jaba, where a middle-school is already operational. “As the law mandates the use of forest land for essential [sic] public schools, we demand that the development of our educational infrastructure proceeds immediately and without delay,” it reads.

“The government officials are telling us that there is no record of the school in official books because it has been built on forest land. A local minister gave us written permission. How can the government deny its existence?” Khokhar said.

Choudhary reported that the bar on tribal pastoralists has adversely affected their livelihoods. “It has not only impacted livelihood but also threatened to erase a culture built over centuries. The government should instead make these people stakeholders in the reforestation process while allowing them to earn a livelihood”.

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