Plea to stay ‘eviction’ of forest dwellers
The Hindu
Govt. not complying with the Act : PIL
Telangana High Court on Thursday issued notices to State government and others in a PIL petition seeking an order to stay the attempts of the government to evict tribals, forest dwellers and other traditional dwellers from the lands they were cultivating in forest areas. Retired university professor P.L. Vishweshwara Rao, Dr. Cheruku Sudhakar and K. Shravan Kumar filed the PIL plea.
They alleged in their petition that the government was not complying with the provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Rules-2008.
While traditional forest dwellers were cultivating lands in forest areas for past several decades, the authorities suddenly started evicting them from those places without adhering to the rules and rulings issues by the Supreme Court, their counsel Chikkudu Prabhakar said in the court. A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice A. Rajasheker Reddy, which heard the plea, issued notices to the government.