Times of India | 10 hours ago | 18-11-2022 | 04:40 am
Panaji: The government has set a target of handing over 10,000 sanads to claimants of both individual and community rights category within 18 to 24 months, said chief minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday. Sawant handed over land title documents (sanads) for forest land under occupation to 41 beneficiaries under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.Sawant said that the government was working on a fast-track mode to hand over land titles to rightful claimants of forest land under the Act, including to those communities that are not scheduled tribes. “In the next 18 to 24 months, all the claims can be settled if they are processed in a fast-track manner,” said Sawant, while indirectly blaming the ST community for not being united.“Most of the delays were because of the gram sabha where the community was not coming to vouch for the others. There was a mentality where if one person receives the sanad, he stops going for the gram sabha meetings to support the claims of the others. This mentality is not good,” said Sawant.The chief minister also said that therw were instances of property disputes between the beneficiaries of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. “People from the community are now blocking traditional footpaths and roads claiming that it is their property. People need to support each other,” said Sawant.He distributed the land title documents by handing over sanad certificates to the tribal beneficiaries on the 147th birth anniversary of Indian tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda.“There are people from other communities also from Sattari who are residing in the forests, and under the Forest Act, we also plan to give them sanads. Today, those whose sanads were ready, around 41 of them, got them,” said Sawant.Forest dwellers had filed 10,136 applications under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, of which 9,758 are individual claims, while 378 are community claims. Till date around 2,500 sanads have been handed over to beneficiaries.“It is unfortunate that even after so many years since Liberation, we still need to fight, protest and come on the roads to fight for status and benefits for the tribals, for forest rights,” said speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly Ramesh Tawadkar.CM gives clean chit to civil supplies deptChief minister Pramod Sawant gave a clean chit to the civil supplies department in the pilferage of food grains from government godowns, blaming the fair price shops for selling wheat and rice to traders in Hubbali. “I called up the director of civil supplies, and after they took a tally, they said that their quota is still there. So the civil supplies is not directly involved. It is the fair price shops that are selling their quota. It is not the department’s fault,” said Sawant.
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