On August 31, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) sent an office memorandum to the Ministry of Power stating that the Forest Rights Act 2006 does not require gram sabha consent for forest clearance. The memo was issued after the Committee on Public Undertakings (2026‑27) of the Lok Sabha urged that consent from 70‑75% of villages should suffice for large hydropower projects, implying that dissenting gram sabhas could be compelled to comply. The Committee also urged the Ministry of Power to push the matter to MoTA and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and to enforce Forest Rights Act compliance at the pre‑feasibility stage.
The Forest Rights Act, enacted in 2006, made MoTA the nodal agency for its implementation, a shift that removed the MoEFCC’s monopoly on forest matters. In 2009 and again in 2020, the MoEFCC reported that the Act assigned rights to protect about 40 million hectares of community forest resources to village‑level democratic institutions, and that all projects required gram sabha consent. The Supreme Court’s 2013 Niyamgiri judgment reaffirmed that the Act applies to all projects and that gram sabha consent is mandatory.
Despite this, the MoEFCC issued guidance in 2013 that certain linear projects might not need gram sabha consent, a position MoTA rejected in 2014. Subsequent years saw the MoEFCC granting district collectors the power to certify consent, leading to allegations of false certificates. In 2019 the MoEFCC stated that Forest Rights Act compliance would be required only at the final approval stage, a stance that MoTA opposed. The MoEFCC also attempted to replace the 1988 National Forest Policy with a 2018 draft that critics said ignored traditional custodians.
In 2021, MoEFCC and MoTA announced a convergence effort, replacing a 2015 MoTA guideline that allowed gram sabhas to manage community forest resources with a more bureaucratic approach. The same year, the National Conservation Authority ordered the relocation of nearly 400,000 forest‑dwelling families from tiger reserves without seeking gram sabha consent. The Committee’s recent proposal for a supermajority consent further signals a shift toward easing infrastructure projects at the expense of forest‑dweller rights, while MoTA continues to claim that the Forest Rights Act is a state‑level matter.
