Deo accuses state on tribal displacement

 By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, April 10, 2013: In yet another scathing attack, on the state government, the union tribal affairs minister, V Kishore Chandra Deo, in a letter to the chief ministers of all the states on implementing various provisions under Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, accused the state leadership for deliberately pushing aside alternative proposals to entail least displacement of tribes, by constructing the multipurpose Polavaram project.

Deo on April 4 wrote to the chief ministers of all the states urging them effective implementation of FRA in their respective states. While he said that Maharashtra and Odisha making changes in their policies with respect to bamboo transit rights are partial, in other states there is still a complete vacuum in empowering tribals.

Dwelling upon non cognizance of viable alternative propositions among various other problems fettering the effective implementation of FRA, Deo said there are certain propositions/proposals for amicable  settlement of rights of tribals and forest dwellers, but it is disconcerting to note that there isn’t an iota of consideration of these even before implementation of FRA.

He further said “for instance in Andhra Pradesh in the context of Polavarm projects, there already were some alternative proposals for resolving issues arising there from. These proposals were not considered worthy even a look although they offer viable solution which if opted for would entail least displacement of tribals, with considerably less area under submersion of water, and related Relief & Rehabilitation options. This is nothing but a deliberate conscious apathy by our own state authorities for problem resolutions. This aspect calls for serious consideration.”

It may be worth mentioning here that in another letter to the governors of states having schedule V areas recently Deo, accused the state government of trying to brazenly distort the constitutional safeguards against the interests of tribals.

He also earlier reportedly wrote a letter to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi calling the chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy ‘ineffective’, besides terming PCC chief Botsa Satyanarayana a ‘mafia don’.

This was after there was no response from the Chief Ministers Office (CMO) to his directives to the state government to immediately cancel the MoUs it signed with ANRAK and Jindals on supply of bauxite ore proposed to be mined in Vizag Agency by APMDC.