The Forest Rights Act

On January 31st, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, going against the findings of its own committees, decided it had to find some way around the law to favour POSCO.   Therefore - knowing fully well, from the findings of its committees, that the area is inhabited by other traditional forest dwellers - it decided to ask the State government to lie one more time and give it a "categorical assurance" that the area is not inhabited by forest dwellers.   After that, in a last attempt to assert the truth, the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti sent a string of representations to the Ministry that outlined all the evidence, placed before it fresh complaints from the Forest Rights Committees and resolutions of the palli sabhas, and repeatedly asserted what the law required.  The Ministry of course ignored all this in its final order.  We are placing these documents in the public domain to expose how the Ministry so shamelessly threw the law to the winds to favour the company.