PANJIM: Following the stay by the Apex Court on its own order, the State government has decided not to go ahead with the eviction of tribals and other forest dwellers fro forest land.
The Supreme Court had last week suspended the implementation of its February 13, 2019, order directing States to evict forest dwellers from forests across India.
The state level monitoring committee headed by the Chief Secretary to look into the claims by the tribals and other forest dwellers held its meeting on Tuesday at the Secretariat.
During the meeting, sources said that the Chief Secretary directed the officials concerned that no eviction of tribal people and other forest dwellers was be done in view of the new order by the Supreme Court.
Information reveals that out of the 10,136 claims made by the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) in Goa, 47 were rejected by the government. “47 rejected claims will be also be reviewed,” Tribal Welfare Director Venancio Furtado said after the meeting.
In Goa, 6094 claims have been filed by STs of which 5834 were individual claims and 260 were community claims.
Of these 42 individual claims were rejected by the government. The number of claims filed by Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) was 4042, of which 3924 were individual claims and 118 were community claims. Five of the individual claims were rejected.
