Rajaji national park was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1983 and later, a tiger reserve in 2015. The Van Gujjars, a pastoral nomadic community, have been living inside the park for decades. During winters, the Van Gujjars migrate with their herds to the foothills of the Shivalik mountain range, and in summers, they migrate to pastures high up in the mountains. The community has been granted the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, but in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh they are still classified as Other Backward Classes (OBC). 

The settlement of nomadic communities on common land is often termed as encroachment by the state and society. Generations of these communities have moved from one place to another, along with their cattle, to earn their livelihood. Many of these communities belong to ‘denotified tribes’, which were earlier classified as ‘criminal tribes’ by the colonial government. The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1945, but the denotified tribes have little protection even today when it comes to land rights, unlike many others belonging to the SC and ST communities. Whenever these nomads settle on any common land, they claim traditional rights over it and demand ownership. The state, on the other hand, considers them encroachers as they have no legal titles over what the state considers government land. The absence of permanent land to settle in and the lack of legal titles as well as laws to safeguard their interests has left these nomadic communities vulnerable.

Currently, around 1,610 Van Gujjar families live within the Rajaji National Park, while 1,393 families have been relocated in the past 15 years on the pretext of wildlife conservation and encroachment.

The first attempt to relocate the Van Gujjars from the park was undertaken in 1985. In the following years, the community members were regularly harassed to vacate the land and move out of the park.

Faced with the threat of eviction, the community approached the Uttarakhand High Court in 2005 under the banner of Ban Gujjar Kalyan Samiti. In 2008, the court served a contempt notice to the director of Rajaji National Park for evicting the community without settling their forest rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. However, the Van Gujjars till date continue to fight against the forest department to get access to resources in the park.

On June 28, 2011, Noorjamal, a Van Gujjar and an activist, was detained in Sharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on false charges. To protest against his illegal arrest, many women from the Van Gujjar community in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand protested in their respective states. In Uttar Pradesh, they locked police personnel inside their homes. Noorjamal was released later on the same day.

The relocation of Van Gujjars have continued over the years. In 2011, the Uttarakhand government issued orders to vacate 228 families from the Chillawala range. In 2017, 22 families from Chillawalla range, 13 families from Gohri range and one family from Ramgarh range were ordered to be relocated.

In 2018, the Uttarakhand High Court termed the settlement of the Van Gujjars in Rajaji National Park illegal, ordering eviction without rehabilitation. This started a wave of protests. In September 2018, the Supreme Court stayed the order of the high court.

In June 2020, forest officials visited the homes of eight Van Gujjar families living in the Asharodi Forest Range at the park to question them on why they built their houses inside the park. A confrontation ensued during the interrogation, and forest officials allegedly assaulted members of the community, two of whom were seriously injured. They also assaulted women. The officials arrested 10 community members. When the Van Gujjars, led by Mustafa Chopra, went to register a complaint, the police refused to do so and asked them to put the application in a drop box.

A week after the incident, several organisations staged demonstrations in Ramnagar, Almora and Khatima condemning the attacks on tribes-people and demanding action against the officials responsible. Following the outcry, forest minister of Uttarakhand, Harak Singh Rawat, ordered a probe into the incident.

On August 17, 2020, the Uttarakhand High Court asked the state government to set up a committee within six weeks to look into the problems faced by the Van Gujjars. This was after a PIL was filed by a non-profit organisation, Think Act Rise Foundation, which said that the community lacks basic rights and is often forcefully evicted. The committee was formed on October 20, 2020, comprising the principal chief conservator of forests and wildlife of Uttarakhand, the state chief wildlife warden, field director of Rajaji Tiger Reserve, a person nominated by the Wildlife Institute of India, and a person nominated by the World Wildlife Fund.

In March 2021, the Uttarakhand High Court rapped the state government for constituting a committee that was not competent to examine the issues and rights of Van Gujjar community. It directed the government to re-constitute the committee with competent members and gave specific directions to the committee thus formed to submit its recommendations within three months. In June, the state government reconstituted the committee.

There has been no update on the report submitted by the reconstituted committee.

In 2022, Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan (VGTYS) submitted claims under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 and further submitted them to the SDM office seeking an ST status.

However, they continue to be at the receiving end of anti-encroachment drives by the Uttarakhand government. Van Gujjars face eviction notices not only in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, but along the Rajaji National park, Nandhaur Wildlife Sanctuary, as well as in Haldwani.

The Van Gujjars with the help of community based organisations such as the Van Panchayat Sangharsh Morcha have contested these eviction notices. In May 2023, the Uttarakhand Forest Department admitted errors in the notices issued to the Van Gujjars.