Each year, around 12,000 Agariya families migrate to the Little Rann of Kutch for a period of eight months (from September to AprilMay) for salt farming. The Agariyas are nomadic and denotified tribes. In 1948, Government of India had declared that smallscale salt farmers, who have less than 10 acres or 4 hectares of land, do not require lease to make salt. But after Little Rann of Kutch was declared a sanctuary in 1973, and technically became a forest, the forest department allegedly started haressing them for using its land to make salt. But the salt farmers say that they have been farming salt here for generations. They demand their customary sesonal user rights to farm salt in Little Rann of Kutch under the Forest Rights Act. They have submitted applications demanding these rights to the local government bodies but have not heard anything yet. The average land use by each salt farmer is just about 4 or 5 acres and they claim that they do not use more than 3% of the total land of the sanctuary. In 2013, Gujarat government issued a resolution saying that the government has initiated the process to create Forest Right Committees in the area for this purpose. No action has been taken so far by the committees. About 5,000 sq km of Little Rann of Kutch has never been surveyed, so there is a lot of confusion about ownership of the land.