Not ‘necessary’ for Nicobar tribal leaders to join plea on FRA: Ministry of Tribal Affairs to court

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs says the Nicobarese leaders are neither necessary nor proper parties to the petition. In its response, it argues that they were “sleeping over their alleged rights during the entire statutory process.” The Ministry therefore says their request to join the case should be rejected.

The dispute concerns whether forest rights were properly settled before land was approved for diversion. The Nicobarese leaders argue that the official certification relied on consent from non-tribal settler communities, not from tribal gram sabhas. They say no meeting of tribal communities discussed the project.

Their inclusion matters because the Nicobarese are primary claimants to forest rights on Great Nicobar Island. The Calcutta High Court petition challenges the Union government’s claim that those rights were settled. The court must consider the competing positions about participation, consent, and the legality of the approval.

The Forest Rights Act, 2005, is the law used to recognise the historical rights of tribal and other forest-dwelling communities. These rights concern forest resources and include individual and community forest rights. The law makes recognising and settling those rights important before forest land can be diverted.

Under the Act, gram sabhas pass resolutions about individual and community rights. A Sub-Divisional Level Committee informs gram sabhas about their rights and duties, then examines their resolutions. This process is meant to establish whether the claims are genuine and whether diversion would infringe recognised rights.

The law matters on Great Nicobar because the government plans to divert 166 square kilometres of forest land. The petition challenges the claim that rights were settled there. Nicobarese residents say tribal gram sabhas were not consulted, while the Ministry defends the statutory process.

The planned diversion covers 166 square kilometres of forest land on Great Nicobar Island. That is the land area identified for the Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island, a major infrastructure project by the government.

The project includes several large facilities. These are a transshipment port, a township, a greenfield international airport, and a solar and gas power plant. The scale makes the Forest Rights Act process central, because forest-clearance rules require rights to be recognised and settled before diversion.

The proposed facilities would be built in an area inhabited by Nicobarese and Shompen communities, as well as mainland ex-servicemen’s families settled there from 1969 onwards. The dispute is not about the stated size alone. It concerns whether the required tribal consent and forest-rights process was properly completed.

The Lieutenant Governor constituted the Sub-Divisional Level Committee on July 26, 2022. Sixteen days later, on August 12, a special gram sabha reportedly unanimously approved diverting 166 square kilometres for the project. The timetable was extremely compressed.

The committee met the next day, August 13. It concluded that no rights were being infringed and approved the diversion. On August 16, a No Objection Certificate was added to its minutes, bearing the signature of Barnabas Manju, chief of the Great Nicobar Tribal Council.

The approval later became disputed. Manju wrote to the Union Environment Ministry seeking rehabilitation in ancestral villages, then withdrew consent for the NOC in November 2022. The sequence is central to the court challenge because it raises questions about consultation, consent, and whether tribal rights were genuinely considered.

Nicobarese leaders say the official certificate falsely claimed that the concerned gram sabhas consented to forest diversion. They argue that the cited meetings belonged to settler communities, where no Nicobarese were present. That, they say, cannot represent the tribal people whose rights are directly affected.

Their impleadment document says no gram sabha meeting of the tribals was ever convened to discuss diverting forest land for the project. This challenges the basis of the government’s certification. Under the reported Forest Rights Act process, gram sabhas are expected to pass resolutions on individual and community forest rights.

The issue remains before the Calcutta High Court in Meena Gupta’s petition. The Ministry rejects the leaders’ request and says they delayed asserting their alleged rights. The leaders and supporters instead say excluding genuine forest dwellers from gram sabhas violates the law.

The Nicobarese were displaced from ancestral villages by the 2004 tsunami. Returning to those villages has remained a long-standing demand. The article says parts of this land would be diverted for the Great Nicobar development project, putting that demand in direct tension with the proposed construction.

Forest diversion also makes the status of their rights crucial. The Forest Rights Act requires rights to be recognised and settled before forest land is diverted. If the process relied on settler consent rather than tribal participation, the Nicobarese argue that their rights may not have been properly considered.

The immediate consequence described is uncertainty over land, rehabilitation, and return. Barnabas Manju sought rehabilitation within ancestral villages and later withdrew consent for the NOC. The court challenge now contests the government’s claim that forest rights were settled, so the project’s impact depends partly on that legal dispute.

Under the Forest Rights Act, gram sabhas are the community forums that pass resolutions on individual and community forest rights. Their role is important because the law recognises the historical rights of people who live in and depend on forests. Their participation helps establish whose rights exist before land is diverted.

A Sub-Divisional Level Committee must inform gram sabhas about their rights and duties. It then examines the resolutions they pass and assesses their veracity. In this case, Nicobarese leaders say that meetings of non-tribal settlers were treated as the relevant gram sabhas, while no tribal meeting was held.

That alleged mismatch is the heart of the dispute. Souparna Lahiri said that excluding genuine forest dwellers from gram sabhas violates the law. The Ministry takes the opposite view and says the statutory process was completed. The court case will test these competing claims about representation and consent.