The Congress government in Chhattisgarh is considering filing a review petition in Supreme Court against its order which said forest dwellers whose claims have been rejected under the Forest Rights Act will have to be evicted by state governments.
This comes after Congress chief Rahul Gandhi wrote to Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, suggesting the filing of a review petition if he saw fit. Senior officials of the state government said that on January 22, they had decided to reconsider all rejections under the FRA and are, therefore, likely to communicate to the apex court that these applications should not stand as rejected, but under active consideration.
In his letter to Baghel, Rahul wrote that the recent order required the chief minister’s urgent intervention. “The Ministry of Tribal Affairs in its status report on the implementation of the FRA highlighted that less than 45 per cent of the Individual Forest Rights and 50 per cent of the community rights claims were approved as on April 2018. Further, MOTA had pointed out that forest staff often raised frivolous objections leading to rejection.