Error 404!

On a warm October afternoon in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh, about 20 men gathered for a baithak (meeting) to express their fears of being dispossessed from their fields. They had filed online claim applications for land titles under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) four years ago, but had no information on the status of their claims. The government launched the VanMitra portal as a 'tech solution' to review rejected FRA land title claims but it has made the process even harder. The rejection rate of claims filed for individual land titles shot up by 13% after the introduction of the portal. The 'digital solution' for pending forest rights claims has further heightened the fear of dispossession among the locals.

Read the full story