Podu pattas’ meeting throws up more questions than answers

HYDERABAD: The one-day stock-taking meeting over the issue of providing pattas between the tribal welfare and forest department officials at MCR HRD Institute in the city, to find ‘solutions’ to ensure distribution of maximum number of such pattas to applicants, is learnt to have left more questions than answers, leaving top government functionaries wondering if the TRS government can keep its promise of providing pattas to all those ‘in possession’ of forest land with pattas.

The biggest challenge for the government that became further clearer during Friday’s meeting, attended by tribal welfare minister Satyavathi Rathod, was to find ways to bolster the number of beneficiaries from among the nearly five lakh applications that were received last year claiming rights over around 13 lakh acres of forest land.

During discussions, it was learnt that in many of the grama sabhas that were held across the state to vet the applications, the village meetings themselves could not approve a bulk of the applications. With no official willing to sign on ineligible applications – as doing so would mean violating the provisions of the Recognition of Forest Rights (RoFR) Act of 2006 that could attract penalties and possibly result in serious consequences for their service – the problem of keeping the promise of podu pattas to as many applicants as possible, now appears uncertain, it is learnt.

The hope now for the government, it is learnt, is to push the applications through the sub-division level committees (SLDCs) — each comprising a handful of officials on whom some pressure could be brought to bear — that have to scrutinise the applications after the grama sabhas, and ensure that at least an acreage of acceptable proportions, if not the 11 lakh acres for which pattas some TRS ministers have promised could be rustled up.

If the current situation holds, it is learnt that just a fraction of applicants would receive cultivation rights or pattas, that too of an extent not more than two lakh acres at the most. It was also learnt that many applicants, during grama sabhas, made it clear that they do not want mere cultivation rights but proper ownership pattas, on forest land, and on land they believe is owned by the revenue department on which forests exist.