Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Forest Minister Javaid Ahmad Rana on Thursday said that the Lieutenant Governor administration and bureaucrats have no role in the demolition drive in Jammu’s Sidhra targeting families of alleged encroachmenta week after the incident snowballed into a political controversy.
“I inquired about it with the top officials of my department (Forest Department) and was told that they have no information about it. I called Lok Bhavan (official residence of LG Manoj Sinha), and I also inquired with the Chief Secretary. I was informed that they have no information about it, nor has the Revenue Department given orders for demolition,” Rana said, while visiting the affected families in Raika Bandi in Sidhra on the outskirts of Jammu city, where 40 dwellings structures were demolished last week.
“How did this all happen when no one in the government ordered the demolitions. I set up two inquiry teams of officials to ascertain the facts and on whose behest this incident happened,” Rana said.
One inquiry team will be headed by the Director of the Tribal Affairs Department, Mumtaz Ali, who will be assisted by three other officials, while the other committee will be headed by senior officer Rajinder Singh Tara, with Additional Commissioner Revenue (ACR) Jammu and Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Jammu as its members. The teams have been asked to submit their reports in a week.
The Tribal Affairs Department is the nodal department for implementing the Forest Rights Act in Jammu and Kashmir. “The Tribal Affairs Committee will unearth the violations of the FRA in this incident and why the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was not respected in this incident,” the minister said. He visited Raika Bandi on the day of Eid al-Adha (Wednesday) and assured the victims of justice.
The FRA was enacted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2020, a year after the abrogation of Article 370 and 14 years after it was implemented across India.
In February this year, Rana said that 41,944 claims have been received across Jammu and Kashmir under the FRA. Of them, 28,925 are individual forest rights claims and 13,019 community forest rights claims across the 20 districts of the UT. But Gujjar and Bakerwal activists say none of the claims has been accepted by the Forest Department.
A senior officer in the Forest Department told that they have cleared and settled all the genuine claims under the FRA. “No genuine claim is pending in our department,” the officer told, but requested not to be named.
Tribal activist Zahid Parwaz Choudhary said that if the FRA is implemented in Jammu and Kashmir in its “true spirit”, the eviction and demolitions of tribals from forest areas will end. “These atrocities against Gujjar and Bakerwals, which are being perpetrated in the Jammu region, will stop. All controversial and political remarks against tribals will stop once the FRA is enforced in letter and spirit,” Choudhary, who is also researching the FRA in Jammu and Kashmir, told.
