Aug. 31: After being at loggerheads with the Karimganj district forest officials over jhum (slash-and-burn) cultivation for long, tribals living on the fringes of various forests in the Barak Valley have moved Gauhati High Court to safeguard their traditional rights.

The immediate trigger for the legal move was a raid by the district forest department on Khasi settlements about three weeks back, following accusations that the tribals have been violating government rules.

By an order issued in 1973, the government granted each tribal family in the area two bighas of land on the forests’ fringes to cultivate betel leaves, but on the condition that they should permanently give up shifting cultivation and help conserve the ecological balance of the forests.

Karimganj district forest officer (DFO) Salman Uddin Chowdhury said over 500 Khasi tribals were “flagrantly” violating this government order by encroaching on land not allotted to them.

He said the “gift of the land” was only for two years, but could be periodically extended if the tribal farmers did not encroach on additional forest land.

Clement Suchiang, a Khasi betel leaf cultivator and leader of the Barak Valley Tribal Rights Protection Front which is spearheading the movement, flashed the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 in their defence.

The Act recognises the Scheduled Tribe as forest dwellers, but also mentions that they should conserve bio-diversity.

Suchiang said his clan has been living in a cluster in Badshahi woods under the Lowerpuia forest range after the state government granted them their rights over the farmland inside the forests.

The tussle between the tribals and the Karimganj district forest department began when forest employees found that the tribals had dug up ponds in parts of forest land and were rearing fish.

Forest officials of the Lowerpuia range raided the Khasi dwellings about three weeks ago, saying they had encroached upon government land.

The Khasi tribals, on the other hand, accused the DFO of encouraging settlement of the Bangladeshi infiltrators to weed them out.

The south Assam conservator of forests, Y. Suryanarayan, has ordered an in-house probe into Chowdhury’s alleged “excesses”.