The Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA), formally titled The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, is an Act of the Parliament of India. It was enacted in December 2006 to correct the "historical injustice" done to forest-dwelling communities whose rights were not recognized under colonial laws, such as the Indian Forest Acts of 1865, 1894, and 1927. The Act recognizes and vests forest rights in Forest-Dwelling Scheduled Tribes (FDST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) who have resided in such forests for generations.
The Act recognizes four main types of rights: Title rights, which grant ownership of land under cultivation up to a maximum of 4 hectares as of December 13, 2005; Use rights, including the right to collect and dispose of minor forest produce and access grazing areas; Relief and development rights; and Forest management rights to protect and conserve community forest resources. The mechanism for claiming these rights is initiated by the Gram Sabha, which passes a resolution that is then screened and approved by Sub-Divisional and District Level Committees. To qualify as an OTFD, a person must have primarily resided in the forest for at least three generations (75 years) prior to December 13, 2005.
The FRA is closely connected to the constitutional mandate of the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, which protect the rights of indigenous communities. It also interacts with the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 (FCA). A significant recent change occurred with the amendment of the FCA in 2023 (FCA, 2023), which critics argue undermines the FRA by narrowing the definition of "forest" and potentially bypassing the mandatory consent of the Gram Sabha for forest diversion. However, the core provisions of the FRA itself, including the types of rights and the 4-hectare limit, have remained the same.