Rajahmundry: With authorities from forest department failing to prevent encroachment, Maoists have, in the recent past, taken up the encroached reserve area in Chintur agency in East Godavari as a hideout.
Tribals of Guthikoya community from neighbouring Chattisgarh enter AP's Chintur agency on the pretext of looking for work and have, of late, started encroaching the reserve forest area.
Exploiting their presence, Maoists are using the habitations as a hide-out and carry out their operations like laying landmines to target police personnel.
Though the AP government does not recognise the Guthikoya community as tribals, they are still being provided essential IDs like Aadhar card, voter identity card and ration card.
Of the nearly 1.46 lakh hectares reserve forest area in Chintur and other parts in Godavari districts, the Guthikoya tribals, over a period of time, managed to encroach upon 6,000 hectares to set up 40 habitations. Forest authorities who are responsible for the protection of reserve forest areas, are unable to stop the illegal occupation for want of staff. Of the 226 posts sanctioned for Chintur territorial and logging divisions, nearly 142 are lying vacant since August, 2015.
The reason is that when the state government issued GO No. 122 on August 28, 2015 permitting several departments to recruit officers to work in Chintur, the mention of forest department was missing. Subsequently, East Godavari Collector sent a letter to the Chief Secretary in June, 2016 to issue a new one for forest department to go ahead with recruitment. So far there is no progress on it.
Chintur DFO M.V. Prasada Rao said, "We are unable to keep close vigil on encroachment of reserve forest area by Guthikoya tribals due to shortage of man power. However, we have been able to retrieve nearly 400 hectares land from encroachment by counselling the tribals."
Forest authorities also fear encroachment of reserve forest area by Polavaram project affected people as the latter are very impatient over the inordinate delay in implementation of relief and rehabilitation package and have their fears.
