Govt moves ahead with plan to amend Indian Forest Act
- The ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) has invited bids from consulting agencies, firms, joint ventures and consortiums, in an attempt to amend the Indian Forest Act, 1927.
- The ministry released the second expression of interest (EOI) in June 2021– the first was released in April of this year.
Indian Forest Act, 1927
- The Indian Forest Act,1927 aimed to regulate the movement of forest produce, and duty leviable forest produce.
- It also explains the procedure to be followed for declaring an area as Reserved Forest, Protected Forest or a Village Forest.
- It defines what is a forest offence, what are the acts prohibited inside a Reserved Forest, and penalties leviable on violation of the provisions of the Act.
Why there is a need for amendment?
- The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was largely based on the British made Indian Forest Act of 1878, which were primarily established to serve the colonial interest of revenue generation.
- It shows lack of recognition to Community Conserved Areas, conserved by local communities through local knowledge and governance systems.
- Indian Forest Act, 1927, lacks in giving consideration to fauna, biodiversity and ecological balance.
- A lot of cases in courts are related to minor offences under IFA. This needs to be resolved because it leads to unnecessary harassment of people.
- Many reports like the MB Shah report of 2010 and the TSR Subramanian report of 2015, have talked about amending the IFA.
The amendment to the colonial-era Indian Forest Act will focus on:
- Decriminalising relatively minor violations of law;
- Expeditious resolution of cases by compounding small offences; preventing the harassment of citizens.
- Rationalisation of penalties;
- De-clogging of the criminal justice system;
- Promoting public and private participation in ushering in ease of doing business by removing difficulties in trade and transit of forest products across States, or across national borders.
- To encourage non-government actors/ private sector/ civil society/ individuals to take up afforestation/tree planting and/or to develop/manage private forest on non-forest lands.
- To incorporate pragmatic legal provisions already made in State forest laws.