Modi govt committed to protect Adivasis’ rights: Minister

New Delhi, July 10 (SocialNews.XYZ) Union Ministers Bhupender Yadav and Arjun Munda on Sunday hit out at Congress leader Jairam Ramesh and said that the Central government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains committed to protecting the rights of the Adivasis.

Earlier, sharing his statement, Ramesh tweeted: "If anything demonstrates the Modi Sarkar's TRUE intent on protecting & promoting interests of Adivasis, it is this decision, which will disempower crores of Adivasis & others living in forest areas."

Quoting Ramesh's tweet, Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Yadav said: "Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022, are reformative with an objective to streamline the process of approvals under the Act, and enable the parallel processing under other Acts and Rules including FRA, 2006."

"The allegation is an ill-informed attempt to show that the Rules don't care about the provisions of other laws. The government under Narendra Modi ji remains committed to protecting the rights of the Adivasis."

"Mantri-ji, Please don't evade main issue -- that is, are you not making the Gram Sabha irrelevant? You may not have been briefed properly. Your new Rules go AGAINST the 2015 note of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs of Modi Sarkar, as reported," Ramesh responded to Yadav's tweet.

Yadav further said, "Jairam ji, You are trying to insinuate a problem where none exists. There is no dilution of provisions of FRA as being incorrectly interpreted since fulfilment and compliance of FRA 2006 is specifically mentioned in the Rules before State issues orders of diversion."

"It is very much there and well taken care of under the provisions of the respective Acts. The fulfilment and compliance of FRA 2006 is an independent process, which can be done at any stage by the States, but must be completed before granting approval for land diversion," Yadav said.

Joining the Twitter war, union tribal affair minister Munda said, "It's a matter of great misfortune that in last 75 years when Congress party could never thought of having a tribal person as the Constitutional Head of this country, and now when the present government under the leadership of Narendra Modi has nominated a lady from tribal community as the Presidential Candidate from NDA, the Congress party is trying to mislead the nation by making frivolous and baseless allegations."

"Further, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs is totally committed for upliftment of the tribal communities and at no point the provisions of FRA 2006 have been diluted. The task of granting compensation under the FRA 2006 rests with the states and MoTA regularly reviews the implementation of the Act with the States at the level of Chief Secretaries," Munda said.

Munda claimed that the allegation that the present government is trying to snatch the rights from the tribals holds no ground and is just a futile attempt to divert the attention from the fact that NDA's presidential candidate is a tribal woman -- Draupadi Murmu.

Source: IANS