The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) is a landmark Indian legislation that recognizes and vests forest rights and occupation in forest land to forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes (FDST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD). The Act was enacted in December 2006 and came into force on December 31, 2007, to correct the "historical injustice" done to these communities by colonial and post-colonial forest laws that treated them as "encroachers" on their ancestral lands. The problem it solved was the dispossession and marginalization of forest communities whose traditional rights were curtailed by laws like the Indian Forest Acts of 1865, 1894, and 1927, which prioritized commercial extraction and state control.
The mechanism of the FRA is centered on the recognition of three main types of rights: Individual Forest Rights (IFR), Community Forest Rights (CFR), and Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR). IFR grants ownership rights to land under cultivation, up to a maximum of 4 hectares, provided it was under cultivation before December 13, 2005. CFR includes rights over common property resources like grazing areas, fishing, access to water bodies, and the collection and disposal of Minor Forest Produce (MFP). The most transformative provision is the vesting of the right to protect, regenerate, conserve, or manage any community forest resource (CFRR). The Gram Sabha (village assembly) is the primary authority to initiate the process of determining and verifying these rights, placing it at the center of forest governance.
The FRA connects to several other key concepts and acts, including the constitutional provisions in the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), which also empower local self-governance in tribal areas. It also interacts with the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (FCA) and the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. A significant recent change is the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, which has been criticized for potentially undermining the FRA by narrowing the definition of "forest" and decoupling forest clearance from the requirement of prior compliance with the FRA, thereby weakening the Gram Sabha's consent power for forest diversion. This amendment has created a constitutional conflict between the two statutory regimes.