Congress calls Chhattisgarh High Court verdict on forest rights ‘dangerous’

The Congress on Saturday (October 18, 2025) criticised the Chhattisgarh High Court’s decision to set aside forest rights granted to a village community, calling it a “dangerous” blow to the very foundation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006.

In a post on X, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said, “In the latest of a series of unacceptable and unprecedented events that have occurred in Hasdeo Aranya in the two years since the Modani Government has come to power in the State, a Single-Judge Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court has set aside forest rights granted to a village community under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.”

He said one of the “extraordinary reasons” cited in the ruling was that since the land had earlier been diverted for mining and no legal challenge was made then, no claim for forest rights now survives. “There is no mystery of who the beneficiary is,” Mr. Ramesh said, adding, “Modani hai to mumkin hai,” using the Opposition’s oft-used term to alleg proximity between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani in controlling national resources.

Mr. Ramesh, a former Environment Minister, further said the court’s observation that the FRA does not interfere with State rights over mines or minerals beneath forest land is “a strange perversion of logic and justice.”

“The FRA guarantees villagers access to forest produce, which cannot be sustained in the absence of rights to the land itself. The Court has now made this right conditional on Government policy. This is a dangerous verdict that undermines the entire foundation of the FRA,” he said.