Tribal Land Protection and Restoration

Tribal Land Protection and Restoration of Tribal Land

Two main legislative measures were adopted in 1974 and 1975 regarding :

restoration of land involved in illegal transfer to non tribals,
restoration of such tribal land which the first act considered all was involved in legal or valid transfer.

The first act considers all transactions made any time before the July 1974. One section of this act imposes instructions on future alienation of tribal land to non tribals. According to this act no non-tribal can acquire tribal land by way of sale. The tribal can also not transfer his land by way of gift, exchange, mortgage, lease or otherwise without prior permission of the collector which in turn requires the approval of the state government. The land of a tribal should not be auctioned for recovery of government dues. Instead, it should be taken under management and leased to a tribal. Under the two laws, 31,404 cases were registered up to March 1979 and 23,724 were decided. Government officers ordered restoration of land in respect to 9,347 cases. In spite of the above acts, instances of land grabbing by non tribal still took place quite frequently.