NEW DELHI: The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) has asked the Madhya Pradesh government to address complaints about a significant rise in rejection of applications related to community and individual forest rights claims filed through the Van Mitra mobile application, officials said. In a letter to the state’s department of tribal affairs, which this newspaper has accessed, the MoTA has said the App is undermining the rights of the gram sabha (village council) and directed the state government to examine the complaints and submit a report by March 3.The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 or FRA recognises the rights of forest-dwelling communities to land and resources. The rejection of claims has left thousands of tribal families and other forest dwellers deprived of their land rights.The Union ministry letter underscores rule 12A(11) of the FRA, which states that technology like satellite imagery or others may supplement other forms of evidence but not be treated as a replacement.On February 13, eleven forest rights organisations from MP gave a representation to MoTA against the Van Mitra App, blaming it for the massive rejection of forest rights applications. They demanded the ministry’s intervention to safeguard the rights of tribals and other traditional forest dwellers who are dependent on forests for their livelihood.“The Van Mitra App has now become a tool to reject our claim without assessing our evidence,” said Prahlad Singh, an affected applicant from Panna district. Nearly 61% claims rejectedIn February 2019, the Supreme Court had directed states to evict the forest dwellers whose forest rights applications were rejected. Almost 61% of the total 5.80 lakh applications were rejected in MP.
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