Kalimpong, Dec. 3: The Himalayan Forest Villagers’ Organisation will gherao the office of the divisional manager, West Bengal Forest Development Corporation, here on Tuesday demanding that the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006 be passed in the on-going winter session of Parliament.

The demonstration will be part of the nationwide pressure campaign for the bill.

The bill, which was tabled in both the houses of Parliament on May 23, envisages granting rights of forest lands to residents of fringe villages. These lands are already occupied by villagers residing in forests.

It also allows the forest residents to access forest products essential for their survival and livelihoods.

“Tuesday will be the second part of our gherao campaign. Earlier, we demonstrated in front of forest range offices on November 23,” Prem Khawas, the president of the forest villagers’ organisation, told The Telegraph.

On December 8, about 30 of its members will also leave for Delhi where they will join their counterparts from other parts of the country, who, under the banner of National Shramjivi Manch, have been sitting in dharna outside Parliament since the start of the winter session.

There are 56 forest villages in the Kalimpong subdivision with a total population of about 5,000 people, Khawas added.

The present bill is an improvement on the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill tabled last year. “The original bill was flawed in that it sought to ignore a significant number of non-tribal forest-dependent people like those living in the Himalayan tracts,” said Khawas.

The revised bill, which was tabled by a 30-member joint parliamentary committee (JPC), expands its coverage from tribals to “other traditional forest dwellers”.

“Due to the pressure exerted by organisations like ours, the original bill was referred to the JPC last December, which accepted our argument that non-tribal forest villagers had never been given their due rights as forest-dwellers,” said the organisation president.

Other changes in the revised bill are the removal of the earlier cut-off date of 1980, allowing claims by even those dwellers who occupied forest land until 2005 and abolition of the upper limit of areas of 2.5 hectares.