Since they know that the land does not belong to them, these people may not even come to see the plot for several years. In the meantime, we will continue to cultivate the land thinking of it as our own. Years later, they will suddenly appear and claim the land as their own,” he says. The case of Nanchi, who used to own the land under survey number 477/1,3 in Kottathara village which was later possessed by Selvan, an immigrant from Dayannur, has been in court for the past few years. As per the village survey records, the land under survey number 520/2 in Kottathara village is owned by Nanjan, son of Kullan. But Nanjan’s son, 50-year-old Valaithiri, says the land is not with the family anymore.

This is not the first time that the apex court has ordered the eviction of tribes from their traditional and ancestral land. It did so earlier too on a similar petition resulting in countrywide evictions between 2002 and 2004. This process was marred by violence, deaths, protests, and uprooting of around 3 lakh households. The recent order has also foregrounded the attitude and disposition of the government towards the tribes and theissues that affect them.

h Schedule of Indian Constitution Provisions

In a hard-hitting statement on Sunday, Timung accused the Assam Chief Minister and corporate lobbies of influencing the two tribal leaders, who, he said, betrayed the very communities they are constitutionally mandated to https://angelsenter.com/index.php/deposits-withdrawals/ protect. The court also noted that mandatory registration of waqfs was not a new concept. Section 3E deals with the bar of declaration of any land in Scheduled or Tribal area as waqf.

Trouble in tribal lands of Odisha

This provision is designed to protect the land rights of tribal communities and prevent their exploitation. In fact, a study by the Integrated Tribal Development Programme (ITDP) states that 10,106.19 acres of tribal land in Attappady had been alienated as of 1977. After that, the amount of land grabbed from tribal people has only multiplied,” Murugan says. “Earlier, the immigrants used to even physically torture Adivasi people to grab their land, get their signatures, and then scare them away. In a majority of cases, they took advantage of the lease agreement to grab the land,” he adds. Interestingly, as can be observed from Figure 1, the states that have a preponderance of tribal populations also host major mineral reserves, often lying beneath India’s richest forests and watersheds.

• Saran (2005) has categorised the definition of land alienation into two categories, i.e. one is in broader sense and the other one in narrow sense.
• Under the act, if a non-tribal had acquired a land belonging to an ST between October 4, 1956 and September 4, 2002, he/she had to furnish a declaration to competent authority stating circumstances and manner of possession of land.
• In midwestern Mato Grosso do Sul, the group said, convoys of farmers fired shots at the Guaraní Kaiowá community to intimidate the tribe.
• My father and his brother Badiran, whose name is also in the records under survey number 523/2, worked hard and cultivated this land.
• “Most of the time, we don’t even know who took our land or who the current owners are.

In case, the declaration is found to be unsatisfactory or the possessor fails to furnish the declaration, the agricultural land should be given back to the original tribal owner. At this year’s TAC meeting on July 11, the department again proposed substituting sub-section (i) of Section 3 of Orissa Scheduled Areas Transfer of Immovable Property (by Scheduled Tribes) Regulation, 1956, to allow STs to sell their land to non-tribals. It was also approved by the TAC to be followed by the Cabinet’s move to give a go ahead. Nine years later in 2018, the Revenue department proposed another amendment to allow STs to mortgage some portions of their land.

They had shifted to these huts just a few months ago in a desperate attempt to hold on to their land, where their father and grandparents toiled for years cultivating millets and maize. Calling for mass resistance, Timung urged indigenous people to rise above short-term financial temptations and defend their heritage. We must stand united to protect our lands, forests, and cultural identity.

“We will take action to stop these invasions,” Ribeiro told Reuters after meeting the tribal chiefs. Today, their 150 survivors live on a reservation covering 1.9 million hectares near the border with Bolivia. “The amount of reservation land is monstrous and it’s in the hands of very few Indians today,” Garcia said in an interview with Reuters. The opposition and the treasury bench accused each other of being ‘anti-tribal,’ leading to multiple adjournments. On July 30, 2025, unknown assailants opened fire on his residence and vandalised his car—an attack he linked to his petition before the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST). He further disclosed that his complaint to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) led the bank to withdraw loans approved for the Assam Solar Plant project at Lahorijan, a Sixth Schedule area.

“The legislation aims to strengthen land governance by providing a specialised, quasi-judicial mechanism to enforce land rights of protected classes, and address violations,” Mahanta said in the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill. “This is in implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, 1985 and the matters incidental thereto, reaffirming the Government of Assam’s commitment to inclusive land governance and the protection of people belonging to protected classes,” he said. Mahanta said the establishment of district land tribunals is necessitated to ensure speedy, transparent and effective adjudication of cases concerning protected areas. It will also help in overcoming delays inherent in the existing system where revenue authorities, burdened with multiple administrative responsibilities, serve as appellate authorities, the minister said.

As a consequence, mineral extraction is almost always not just environmentally disruptive but also resultsin large-scale development-induced displacement of the tribal population. It is this overlap that complicates matters by excluding total ban on mining in tribal areas, or even a temporary moratorium, as possible interventions to protect the rights of the local population. The government, then, has tried toestablish a legal framework to delicately balance its two disharmonious objectives. Just as serious is the treatment of the other tribe of Great Nicobar – the Great Nicobarese whose ancestral lands are sought to be occupied. The Great Nicobarese had placed their faith in the administration and reached out to all concerned authorities to point out that the proposed project area included their ancestral home lands and that this was not acceptable to them. But their pleas to restore their lands to them have been steadfastly ignored.