Almost 6 years after the submission of final report by a three-man committee on the rehabilitation of Nagarahole tribals, the State government is yet to implement the recommendations of the final report.
Hence the NGOs representing the tribal communities have written to the Chief Justice of High Court of Karnataka, appealing to him to issue a directive to the State government to take up the rehabilitation works. The issue was also raised before the Karnataka Legal Services Authority in Bengaluru on February 27.
The issue is a fall out of a writ petition (WP No. 14379/1999) filed in the High Court of Karnataka by Development through Education (DEED) of Hunsur on behalf of tribals who were displaced or evicted consequent to the notification of the national park in 1992 and as a tiger reserve in 2001. DEED had argued that nearly 18,000 people were affected and left in the lurch but the High Court asked the committee with Muzaffar Assadi as its chairman on October 11, 2004 to ascertain the number of affected people.
The authority’s interim report submitted in 2006 was accepted by the High Court in 2009 with a directive that the final report recommendations be implemented within 2 months. Though the final report was submitted in 2014, the government has not acted on it.
Hence, DEED represented by S. Sreekanth and P. Ramu of Karnataka Vikasa Vahini have drawn the attention of the High Court to the State government’s failure to implement the recommendations.
Mr. Sreekanth said that 3,418 families were affected consequent to the declaration of Nagarahole as a national park and they were to be rehabilitated suitably as per the 3-person committee. But the State government is guilty of contempt of court and the affected families have been left in the lurch, said Mr. Sreekanth.
As per the final report of Musaffar Assadi committee, tribals in H.D. Kote were the worst affected. Out of 3,418 families, 1,801 were from H.D. Kote taluk amounting to 52.69 per cent of the total displaced families. In all, 1,106 families were affected in Hunsur taluk which amounted to 32.38 per cent of the displaced while 511 families were affected in Virajpet taluk of Kodagu district amounting to 14.95 per cent of total displaced tribal population. In all, 11,568 people were displaced
The authority came out with 33 recommendations for the rehabilitation of the tribals that touched upon their socio-economic and cultural aspirations besides according them due political representation. Key recommendations included a conscious effort by the government to ensure that their rehabilitation be participatory in nature and the sites are close to the natural surroundings to which the displaced population is familiar. It also called for relocation of an entire haadi rather than individual families from different hamlets.
The committee recommended the grant of fertile land rather than dry land to the tribals besides training them in farming, dairy, animal husbandry etc. It also called for increasing the financial allocation for Ashrama schools, upgrade them so that they are brought on par with the Navodaya schools, provide land rights to tribals living in the resettlement areas, introduce internal reservation for primitive and forest tribes, and establishment of an Adivasi university.
