By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, July 08, 2022: The Odisha government has worked out a plan to give titles of individual and community forest land under the Forest Right Act to all eligible tribal people by 2024, apparently to empower the tribal in the state.

According to the Forest Rights Act, a member of a Scheduled Tribe who has been residing in and using a piece of forest land since 2005, but does not have formal legal rights over it, is entitled to a land title. Non-tribal communities, known as Other Traditional Forest Dwellers, can also avail these rights but have to furnish proof that they have been residing on the forest land for three generations.

The push for 100 per cent land rights to tribal people in Odisha comes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly elections, with the ruling Biju Janata Dal trying to stave off a challenge from the Bharatiya Janata Party that performed well in 2019 general elections by winning eight of the 21 Lok Sabha seats.

Droupadi Murmu, BJP’s Presidential candidate, is also from Odisha, which the party hopes will boost its support base from a large tribal catchment in Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

As of today, Odisha leads all states in the country in granting individual forest rights titles with 452,000 beneficiaries, with Chhattisgarh coming a close second with 446,000. In land titles for community forest rights, Chhattisgarh is way ahead of other states with 45,000 titles.

However, Odisha has among the lowest rejection rates in claims under forest rights, with 20 per cent of the claims turned down, compared to 51 per cent of Madhya Pradesh, 44 per cent of Chhattisgarh and 25 per cent of Jharkhand.

ST and SC development secretary Ranjan Chopra said the mission to provide land titles by 2024 was in the works and will be launched soon, under which tribal people will be all kinds of forest rights, whether individual, community or habitat.