Abetted By State Govt, Hindu Group In Himachal Pradesh Burns Crops, Demands Eviction Of Muslim Tribe https://article-14.com/post/abetted-by-state-govt-hindu-group-in-himachal-pradesh-burns-crops-demands-eviction-of-muslim-tribe-620c68c3c8191 KAPIL KAJAL 16 Feb 2022
Muslim Gujjars are a scheduled tribe, legally and constitutionally protected from eviction from their traditional forest land. Himachal’s Gujjars—who do not follow many Islamic practices, such as hijabs for women and praying five times a day—were notified as a scheduled tribe 55 years ago in 1966.
The ripping out of electricity meters and burning of cow sheds are part of a campaign launched against the Gujjars of Indora on the instigation of the VHP, which alleged a “land jihad”—an unsubtantiated trope often used by Hindu extremists and media that support them—via encroachments on pastures.
In a cow death which was proved to be of natural causes, related case.. the police filed cases of encroachment against the Gujjars. An investigation was underway, said Sharma. After investigations into ownership of land began, eviction notices were served on 83 families, about half of them Gujjar. The rest were mostly Hindu tribals called Gaddi. But these notices were served in violation of India’s Constitution and forest law, which confers residential rights on scheduled tribes living on forest land or grasslands or “waste land” designated as forest.
Lawyers pointed out that even if anyone from a scheduled tribe did not have a title deed, the The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA in short), gave them the right to live on land deemed to be forest.
In section 4(5), the FRA states that no member of a forest-dwelling scheduled tribe or “other traditional forest dweller” shall be ejected or removed from the forest land under her occupation till a “recognition and verification procedure” is complete, a point reiterated by the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament in 2019.