PITOR BASUMATARY Vs. STATE OF ASSAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Pitor Basumatary and six others have filed this petition in purported public interest with the plea that the petitioners have been espousing the grievances of other village dwellers who are members of Scheduled Tribes Community and have been residing in forest villages for the last 35-40 years i.e., from early 1980s. It has been pleaded that the petitioners being indigenous Scheduled Tribes residents of forest villages in Chariduar Reserved Forest under Sonitpur District are socially responsible persons and are conscious of the needs of their respective communities.

(2.) It has been asserted that the petitioners are forest dwellers and have no other place to reside, except the present place where they have been residing. The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (for short, hereinafter referred to as 'the Act of 2006') is an Act to correct the historical injustice done to forest dwellers. Forest villagers have not been granted occupancy rights over their lands by the authorities in contravention of the provisions of the Act of 2006, rather the dwellers have been living in fear of the authorities who might evict them. It has been pleaded that in the last two decades even schools have been established in the forest villages for the education of children, however forest dwellers are being termed as encroachers.

(3.) It has been pleaded that the petitioners' villages have been declared as forest villages within the meaning of Sec. 2(f) of the Act of 2006. It has been pleaded that there is no impediment for the authority to convert their villages into revenue villages, while acknowledging their rights vis-a-vis the forest.