Click to play videoNew Delhi: Yashoda would have reasons to celebrate. The Tribal Bill became law almost eight months back. It would give her land rights. But Yoshada is still waiting for the elusive rights as the law is yet to be operationalised.
This is one deal which the Left wants operationalised. After much resistance from the conservationists and a section of the Congress, everybody agreed and the tribal legislation was born and baptised last December. Eight months later, it seems the Bill has been forgotten by everybody.
But the Left is now turning on the heat on the government.
"The government should get its priority right. Why are they not notifying it? Why is the delay? Who is pressurising the government? We would urge the UPA Government to immediately give land and forest rights to the tribals as promised in the election manifesto," senior CPI-M leader Brinda Karat says.
The Left took a while to make out that it was just a piece of dead legislation. Its own priority seems crystal clear: the nuclear deal, wheat imports and then the Tribal Bill.
"As far as the Bill is concerned, there is no delay. In fact, we have received the report from the technical support committee only on May 11. After that, it had to go to the Law Ministry," says PR Kyndia, Union Tribal Affairs Minister.
But the reasons for the delay could lie elsewhere. For the Manmohan Singh Government, busy giving a final shape to the SEZ policy, the tribal law comes as a self-inflicted wound. The dilemma is how to reconcile the two sets of laws relating to land, which run counter to each other.
Without the law being enforced, Yoshada does not have any land rights or access to the forest. Activists say the government is pre-empting the proposal to give land rights by evicting people like Yoshada from their lands.
"This is a well thought out strategy of the government. It is forcefully evicting people so that they don't have any claim over land," Shankar Singh, a UP-based tribal rights activist, alleges.
The campaigners of the law are planning a jail bharo andolan on October 2 to force the government to implement the Act immediately. But for Yashoda, who has been fighting for her rights, the battle is still far from over.
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