More than 67,000 forest dwellers get home in Madhya Pradesh

BHOPAL: Taking a lead in effectively implementing Forest Rights Act, Madhya Pradesh government has so far distributed land rights documents and settled 67,416 individual and community claims.
MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has directed for fresh review of rejected claims of forest dwellers in the state, officials said.
Sub-divisional officers of the revenue and forest departments have been directed to undertake tours of forest villages and examine forest land rights claims at meeting of gram sabha and furnish certificate that now no case pertaining to individual or community claim on forest lands within five kilometer (km) radius of 22,000 villages is pending, they added.
Directives have been given to district collectors to ensure that all the cases pertaining to forest land rights in their respective areas are disposed of till September-end.
As many as 22,000 villages in the state are situated within five km radius of forest periphery. Forest land rights claims have been received from 9,753 villages. Besides scheduled tribes, forest land rights are also to be given to other traditional forest dwellers over lands under their possession under Forest Land Rights Act.