Only 5% of tribals eligible to get podu land pattas under FRA in Khammam

Khammam: The forest department reckons that only five per cent of the applicants claiming rights on podu lands are eligible to get pattas under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) as per the present podu survey.

These five per cent applicants are the STs that failed to claim their rights on forest land due to various reasons before 2005. They may get pattas in the present exercise.

So far, the podu land survey pertaining to 14,530 applications out of the total 18,295 requests from 132 habitations has been completed. The survey of the remaining 3765 applications is under way.

Under the Forest Regulation Act, there is no chance of non-tribals like backward classes, scheduled castes and forward castes getting podu land rights. Not a single clause would allow them get podu lands except by proving their tilling of the lands for the last 75 years before 2005. This means they can stake their claim if a particular land was in their hands since 1930.

The forests in Telangana were declared as reserve forests through the Hyderabad Forest Act during the Nizam government, that is after 1947, by carving them out as reserve forest blocks, numbering 60. This meant all the forests in Telangana will come under these blocks. There is no chance for the non –tribal farmers to prove their claims on the podu lands.

It was in 1967 that the united Andhra Pradesh government brought in the AP Forest Act. It brought all the forests in the state under reserve forest blocks. The two acts will ensure non-tribals do not obtain forest land under Forest Rights Act, 2006. There is no chance for them to prove their families were tilling any podu land since 1930.

In Gubbagurthi village in Konigerla forest range, there were only four ST applicants out of total 696 and the remaining families are from the backward class communities. In Annavaram village, about 160 applicants out of 271 were non-tribals and 111 from STs.

Interestingly, the STs, who applied for division of lands held by them for generations among the legal heirs, have also applied for land in the podu survey. They are not entitled to apply in the present podu lands survey. They have to apply separately under the succession column.

It is also found that the adivasis who applied for the pattas on podu lands showed reserve forest or vacant land as the land in their possession. In the present survey, they should give evidence their families had tilled the land for a long time. There were either the trees or desert land or saline land in these places and no trace of tilling the land.

In Sathupalli range, the podu land survey of 4800 applicants has been completed against the total of 5396. Five per cent applicants belonging to ST are eligible to get pattas under the present exercise.

There is clarification from the forest department that “the applicants should know that the podu land survey is just completed and it does not mean that the issues of applicants were settled”.