MARGAO: Around 300 families from Gaondongrim village living in the forest land or dependent on forest for their livelihood are close to getting their rights — thanks to the initiative taken by South Goa Collector Anjali Sherawat on whose efforts, these villagers will finally see the result of the legislation passed two years ago in 2016.
It may be recalled that following the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, the rights of people living in these areas and dependent on forests became an issue and finally in 2016 the Forest Rights Act was promulgated giving certain rights to the people.
While in the rest of the country over 80 per cent of the population concerned have got their Forest Rights, in Goa the figure stood at a miserly one per cent and this was due to one of the mandatory conditions in implementing this Act.
Under the Act, the forest rights can be granted to claimants provided 50 per cent of the gram sabha members approve it and in Goa no gram sabha gets the mandated quorum of one tenth of the members leave alone 50 per cent of the members hence the forest rights were not being granted to the deserving people.
Realizing the situation, Anjali motivated the panchayat and her officials including the deputy collector, mamlatdar, panchayat secretary, Block Development Officer, etc and ensured that 2000 people attended the special gram sabha at Gaondongrim panchayat held on January 26, 2018.
“We used all government officials and machinery to motivate the villagers to attend the gram sabha as all government schemes applicable to them would be explained there,” she said adding that the villagers were also told that lunch would be served.
“As we got the various departments to depute a representative to explain the schemes to the people and also to assist the people to apply for them, the response was tremendous,” she said. It would be pertinent to point out that this is a record in Goa as no gram sabha in the State has attracted even 1000 attendance.
“We received 300 claims for forest rights on that day itself and now the Deputy Collector is pursuing the applications with one day in a week dedicated only to deal with these applications,” Anjali said.
