PANJIM: The State government has set the target of settling as many as 10,136 Forest Rights Claims before March 31 this year and sought cooperation of the people to settle the long pending issue.
Sawant who also holds the tribal affairs department chaired a high-level review meeting on Friday. After the meeting, he said that the government is 100 per cent interested in giving the land as per Forest Right Claims. But it is not possible to do so without the co-operation of the people, he added.
Sawant said that Forest Rights Claimants are granted sanads of their land through a three-tier process comprising of spot verification by the officials in the presence of the claimant, discussion on the claim in the gram sabha meeting and ompletion of related process by the concerned Deputy Collectors office and issuing of sanads by the respective District Collector’s office.
As on date, of the 10,136 claims made, spot verification has been completed in 6,543 cases, while, 3,293 have gone through village panachayat gram sabha.
and 1,777 claims have reached at the collector office level, he informed.
Sawant said that many claims have been pending due to non-submission of documents, absence or non-cooperation by forest dwellers during spot verification, lack of quorum at gram sabhas etc. The Chief Minister warned claimants who do not co-operate and claim large chunks of forest land as theirs that their claims will not be settled in the future as the matter is before the Supreme Court. “Then don’t blame the government,” he said.
