more than 100 families were evicted from the Rajaji National Park in direct violation of the court order. These families are still outside the park, f

Uttarakhand
In December 2006, Parliament passed the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. This historic legislation marks the first time in India’s history that a law has been passed recognising the rights of forest communities. Implementation of the Act is an unfolding political struggle, and some aspects in Bengal have been published before.
General issues in implementation across states
There are three issues that come up in the majority of the States. Here’s an explanation of the terms and the problems that are being referred to.
1. WHAT KIND OF GRAM SABHAS ARE BEING CALLED: The “gram sabha” (village assembly) is the first tier of decision-making in the Act. But which gram sabha? In reality gram sabhas can be called at three levels. A typical gram panchayat includes multiple revenue villages, which each in turn include multiple hamlets. Hence the gram sabha can be called either as the assembly of all voters in a gram panchayat, as the assembly of all the residents of a revenue village, or as the assembly of the residents of a hamlet. The movements had long demanded that the gram sabhas for this Act should be at the level of the actual settlements - the hamlets, or at most the revenue villages - and not at the artificial administrative level of the gram panchayat, where they would be very large and make democratic functioning impossible. The Act requires hamlet level gram sabhas in Scheduled Areas and revenue village gram sabhas elsewhere.
2. THE FOREST RIGHTS COMMITTEES: Each village is to elect a committee of 10 - 15 people from its own residents as a “Forest Rights Committee”, which will do the initial verification of rights and place its recomnendations before the gram sabha (which makes the decision).
3. COMMUNITY RIGHTS: Contrary to common conception, the Act is not solely or even primarily about individual land claims. Many of the rights, such as the right to minor forest produce, are to be exercised as a community. The most powerful sections of the Act concern the community right to manage, protect and conserve forests, the first step towards a genuinely democratic system of forest management (sections 3(1)(i) and 5). In most areas the State and Central governments have made concerted efforts to deny or ignore these community rights and to instead treat the Act as if it is purely about individual land rights. A key aspect of the struggle is to use and expand these community rights and powers.
No implementation of the Act has yet begun. It was reported in the press that the Chief Minister had stated that there is no need for this Act in Uttarakhand, as all forest rights are already settled (which is untrue). However, recently the Nainital High Court had issued a contempt notice to the director of the Rajaji National Park for attempting to forcibly relocate the Van Gujjar communities in the park, in violation of the earlier orders of the High Court directing him to recognise their rights under the Forest Rights Act. The park director had responded that he had no authority to recognise rights under the Act. The state government was then made a party to the petition and in its order dated 26.9.08 the High Court instructed the government to constitute the required committees under the Rules and initiate the process of claims being filed within a period of 60 days.
In mid October more than 100 families were evicted from the Rajaji National Park in direct violation of the court order. These families are still outside the park, fighting to return to their lands.