Forest rights group asks Tribal Affairs Ministry to withdraw stand on Gram Sabha consent

The Tribal Affairs Ministry must immediately withdraw its August 31 office memorandum that claimed there was “no provision” under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) to seek consent of Gram Sabhas for diverting forest land for non-forest purposes, the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD) said in a statement on Wednesday (September 9, 2026).

The national platform of Adivasi and forest-dweller organisations said the Ministry “cannot simply wash its hands of its responsibility”, calling the Ministry’s position “factually and legally untenable”, which “smacks of dereliction of duty”.

“Shockingly, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has made such a gargantuan factual blunder, something which could have been avoided simply by reading the text of the law,” said the CSD. The CSD’s statement comes amid criticisms of the Ministry’s communication to the Power Ministry, with which it is currently in discussions about how the requirement of 100% Gram Sabha consent for diversion of forest land has become a “critical bottleneck” delaying large government projects, as first reported by The Hindu.

This observation was made by a Parliamentary Committee with inputs from the Power Ministry’s NHPC. The CSD said, “It is a misinformation campaign that the requirement of Gram Sabha consent is the critical factor in delaying projects.

On the contrary, around 3,05,945.38 hectares of forest land have been approved for non-forest use under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, from 2008-09 to 2022-23 without fully complying with FRA.” A day earlier, former Environment Minister and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had also criticised the position of the Tribal Affairs Ministry as a “shocking stance” that went against its own directives, communications, guidelines, and the set procedure under law as it exists today, especially after Supreme Court judgements like the one in the Niyamgiri case.

The CSD echoed the criticism and alleged that the Ministry was taking this position “in order to appease the interests of project developers, contractors and big corporations”. The civil society organisation went on to say that the Gram Sabha consent requirement had been the settled legal position for almost two decades now, adding that attempts to “reverse it through this backdoor method smack of cowardice and anti-people, anti-democratic and unconstitutional motivations”.

The CSD further said that even though the Parliamentary Committee and the NHPC had merely suggested reducing the 100% Gram Sabha consent threshold, the Tribal Affairs Ministry had chosen to “crawl” and completely “erase the requirement of Gram Sabha consent from the law in its entirety”.

“As it is, the Forest Rights Act is being grossly violated across the country—the NDA government and State governments have been destroying forests, curtailing forest rights and threatening the livelihoods of forest dwellers by diverting land for large projects at an alarming pace.

This is only the latest blow by the NDA government to sabotage this historic law,” the CSD said.