In 2006, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was established, and the Union government began to finance structural mechanisms to “facilitate” the implementation of the law to grant forest rights to planned tribes and communities for forest destruction. The implementation of FRA over the past 19 years has been the governments of the territory of state and trade unions.
As part of Dharti ABA Janjatiya gram Utkarsh, the central system, the Ministry of Trade Matters have so far been sanctioned by the establishment of 324 district FRA cells across the law. In addition, FRA cells at FRA level were sanctioned for 17 of these states and trade unions.
The rules governing the operation of these cells arise from the Dajgua program and not from the main legislation of FRA – planned tribes and other traditional forest residents (recognition of forest rights), the law that the law is on the state government authorization (SDDLCS (SDDLCS) (SDDLCS), CORMIY Commerces (SDLCS). (DLCS) and state monitoring committees.
Concerns of activists
Given that the new FRA cells are established through the Dajgua program, activists and forest rights’ rights experts have been concerned that it is a “parallel mechanism of FRA outside Frain.
The government official told the Hindes: “These FRA cells will not have any role in interfering with the Gram Sabha decision, sub-diameter committees, district committees or Ministry of the State Government within FRA.
Dajgua was launched in October 2024 and combines 25 interventions of 17 line ministries for targeted implementation in more than 68,000 tribal villages. One part of the Dajgua program is to speed up the implementation of FRA.
Operating instructions for Dajgua order FRA cells to help with “rapid liquidation” of waiting demands, especially those held even after the approval of the district level committees. According to the latest available progress report since March 2025, 14.45% of the 51.11 Lakh FRA remains on 21 countries/territory of the Union. Of the approximately 43 lamps, more than 42%were rejected.
The highest number of sanctioned district cells of FRA was in Madhya Pradesh, where 55 was approved. This is followed by 30 in Chhattisgarh, 29 in Telangana, 26 in Mahara, 25 in Assam and 24 in Jharkend. Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand are among the states with the smallest FRA pendant, but there are more than 60% of the demands in Assam and there is approximately 50.27% of the demands in Telangana.
While the rules framed under Dajgua order FRA cells to operate under the state government machine, the cells themselves are financed by the center through grants in the support of the General, according to orders for some of them in the states such as Assam, Himacal Pradesh and Odisha, seen by Hinduk. The instructions provide a budget of 8.67 GBP Lakh for each FRA cell at the district level and £ 25.85 lakh for each FRA level at FRA level.
Departure
This means a significant departure from how trade union governments have solved the problem of FRA implementation since the law was framed. So far, when he was confronted with the issue of forest rights in parliament, the Ministry of Major Affairs claimed that the implementation was ordered “primarily” states and that “offers” all governments to comply with the law.
In addition, the Ministry has traditionally been limited to the financing of the training and programs of building capacities for the state government officials in the FRA implementation center, issuing councils and rockets to state governments and compiling the monthly reports of FRA’s data.
Dajgua’s instructions clearly state that FRA cells will deal with all FRA implementation matters “according to the instructions” of state tribal social departments and district administrations and that this will help applicants and grams of Sabhas to prepare paperwork for submission of the Forest Rights Committee.
This includes the collection of evidence, certificates, gram resolutions and set up a set of claims; Help Gram Sabha in the transformation of the forest and uninhabited villages and dwellings to the villages of income; completion of the definition of forest land already entrusted to applicants; Easy to digitize records and feed them into the appropriate portals.
Although this is the first time that FRA cells have been proposed by the Union’s government to speed up the implementation of FRA, the ODISha government has been using a similar mechanism for several years, which has been acting as facilitators on the outside of the legal structure that processes the requirements of FRA, under Tushar Dash’s research law.
“However, the reaction to such a system has so far been mixed. There are concerns that many tasks assigned to FRA cells are already in the positions of statutory committees set up within FRA, leading to confusion at the level of the country to be approached,” Mr. Dash told the Hindu.
He also explained that the creation of multiple committees or cells “will not solve structural problems in Fra”. “It is known that the big reason for waiting demands is that the sub-diameter level committees and the district committees do not meet to decide on demand as often as they should. Second, there is a problem of forest departments sitting on demands even after DLC approval,” Mr. Dash said.
Published – June 11, 2025 20:00
