Strengthening Local Governance: The Role of Panchayats in Forest Rights Implementation

When India enacted the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, it made a deliberate architectural choice: the first and most important decision-making authority under the Act would not be a government officer or a forest department official – it would be the Gram Sabha, the village assembly of all adult members. This was a conscious shift toward bottom-up governance, placing forest communities at the centre of a process that had, for centuries, excluded them. Understanding how Gram Sabhas and Panchayat institutions operate within the FRA framework is essential to understanding whether the Act can truly deliver on its promise.

Why local governance matters in forest rights 🔗

Before the FRA, forest governance in India was almost entirely top-down. The colonial-era Indian Forest Acts of 1865, 1878, and 1927 had progressively transferred control of forests to the state, labelling forest-dwelling communities as “encroachers” on their own land. Post-independence, these laws continued largely unchanged, leaving millions of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) in a legal grey zone – living in forests, depending on them for survival, yet holding no formal rights over them.

The FRA sought to correct this. And crucially, it did so not by simply issuing titles from above, but by decentralising forest governance to the grassroots. The Gram Sabha was vested with the statutory authority to initiate, verify, and recommend forest rights claims – making local governance institutions the engine of the entire process.

The Gram Sabha: the starting point of everything 🔗

Under the FRA, the Gram Sabha is not just a passive platform for information sharing. It has active, legally defined functions. As prescribed under the Act, the Gram Sabha is responsible for initiating the process of determining the nature and extent of individual or community forest rights within its jurisdiction. This means receiving claims from forest dwellers, consolidating and verifying them, preparing maps that delineate the area of each recommended claim, and passing a resolution to forward the verified claims to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC).

This is significant because it places the knowledge of long-standing occupation, use, and dependence – which exists within the community – at the core of the legal process. No government officer sitting in a district headquarters can know which family has cultivated a particular patch of forest for three generations, or which community has traditionally collected Mahua flowers from a particular grove. The Gram Sabha, as a body of all adult village residents, is best placed to know and record this.

To ensure this process is practical, the Act also allows a flexible definition of “village.” Borrowing from the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), the FRA permits the formation of a Gram Sabha for a single habitation, a group of habitations, a hamlet, or a cluster of hamlets – recognising that forest communities are often scattered in small, dispersed settlements rather than large consolidated villages.

Convening the Gram Sabha: the Panchayat’s role 🔗

The first meeting of the Gram Sabha for the purposes of the FRA – specifically for constituting the Forest Rights Committee – is to be convened by the Gram Panchayat Secretary. This is where the Gram Panchayat (the elected local government body) and the Gram Sabha (the village assembly) play distinct but complementary roles. The Panchayat convenes the meeting and provides administrative support, but the Gram Sabha is the decision-making body. As clarified in official FAQs issued by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the presence of the Panchayat Secretary is necessary at the first meeting but is neither required nor expected at every subsequent meeting – the Gram Sabha and its Forest Rights Committee are then left to continue their work independently.

The Forest Rights Committee: the Gram Sabha’s working arm 🔗

Given that a Gram Sabha can be a large body of all adult residents, the FRA creates a smaller, operational committee to assist it in day-to-day claim processing. This is the Forest Rights Committee (FRC). The Gram Sabha elects the FRC from amongst its members, with a composition of 10 to 15 members, of which at least two-thirds must be from Scheduled Tribe communities and at least one-third must be women. This mandatory inclusion of women is a significant governance provision – it ensures that the rights process is not captured by a narrow male or upper-caste elite within the village.

The FRC’s functions are the operational backbone of the claims process. It receives claims from individual and community claimants, acknowledges each claim in writing, conducts field verification by physically visiting claimed sites, assesses the evidence submitted, verifies boundaries, gathers testimonies from neighbours, and prepares detailed reports. It then presents its findings to the full Gram Sabha. As documented by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the FRC assists the Gram Sabha in receipt, verification, and processing of claims – it does not take decisions on its own. The final resolution on all claims must be passed by the Gram Sabha itself.

From resolution to the tiered committee structure 🔗

Once the Gram Sabha passes its resolution on claims, the process moves upward through a three-tier verification hierarchy. The Gram Sabha’s resolution and verified claims go to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC), which serves as both a review body and the first appellate authority. The SDLC is headed by a Sub-Divisional Officer and includes a forest officer, three members of the block/tehsil level Panchayat nominated by the District Panchayat, and an officer from the Tribal Welfare department. The inclusion of three Panchayat representatives here is important – it ensures elected local governance continues to have a voice at the next tier.

The SDLC either forwards the claims to the District Level Committee (DLC) or returns them to the Gram Sabha for modification. The DLC, which includes the District Collector and similarly has three elected Panchayat representatives among its six members, makes the final decision on claims. The design of both committees – half government officials, half elected representatives – reflects the Act’s intent to balance bureaucratic oversight with democratic accountability.

Community forest rights and the governance of forest resources 🔗

Beyond individual land rights, the FRA vests the Gram Sabha with substantial authority over Community Forest Rights (CFR) – rights over common forest resources that communities have traditionally used and protected. Once CFR rights are granted to a community, the Gram Sabha becomes the central statutory authority for all decisions relating to the conservation and management of that forest area.

To exercise this responsibility, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs guidelines require the Gram Sabha to constitute a Community Forest Rights Management Committee (CFRMC). The CFRMC consists of 5 to 11 members, with at least two-thirds from among forest rights holders and at least one-third women. Its tenure, decided by the Gram Sabha, ranges from three to five years. The CFRMC develops a Community Forest Resources Management Plan (CFRM Plan) and, after the Gram Sabha approves it, coordinates with the Forest Department to integrate the plan with the department’s own micro plans and working plans. Critically, the committees formed by the Gram Sabha have the authority to propose modifications to the Forest Department’s plans – a formal legal power that fundamentally repositions the community from a passive subject of forest management to an active co-manager.

Section 5 of the FRA goes further, enjoining the Gram Sabha and forest rights holders with the responsibility of conserving and protecting biodiversity, wildlife, forests, catchment areas, water sources, and other ecologically sensitive areas. This is a rights-and-responsibilities model – the community receives legal recognition of its rights, and in turn takes on formal conservation duties that were previously the exclusive domain of the Forest Department.

Financial autonomy of the Gram Sabha in forest management 🔗

The governance empowerment under the FRA is also financial. Under Section 4 of the Act, Gram Sabhas have the power to control, plan, and manage minor water bodies, Minor Forest Produce (MFP), and community resources. A separate bank account is to be opened in the name of the Gram Sabha for implementation of the CFRM Plan, operated by the CFRMC’s authorised office bearers. All expenditure must follow rules laid down by the Gram Sabha itself, and the Gram Sabha sets the ceiling above which any expense requires a formal resolution. This financial architecture gives the community real economic agency over forest resources – including revenue from the sale of Minor Forest Produce.

Real-world impact: Gram Sabhas as agents of change 🔗

The village of Mendha-Lekha in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, is frequently cited as the most striking demonstration of what Gram Sabha-led forest governance can achieve. The community constituted a Gram Sabha as early as 1985 and began forest protection efforts in 1987. When the FRA came into force, Mendha-Lekha was among the first villages to receive Community Forest Rights titles. The Gram Sabha subsequently elected a CFRMC, and the community took over management of the forest – rejecting existing Joint Forest Management Committee arrangements with the Forest Department and independently managing Minor Forest Produce collection and sales.

In Odisha’s Rayagada district, the village of Kalakani saw 25 tribal families, who had long faced harassment from forest officials, successfully claim 65 hectares under CFR rights after their Gram Sabha formed an FRC and walked through the claims process. In another village in the same district, Pajilibandha, 54 tribal families – particularly women – who previously sold forest produce at exploitative prices to middlemen, formed an FRC in 2023 and began processing and selling produce independently. Monthly incomes rose to Rs 5,000-6,000 per member, demonstrating how forest rights recognition, enabled through Gram Sabha processes, translates into direct livelihood improvement.

The gap between design and ground reality 🔗

Despite the Act’s well-designed institutional framework, implementation has fallen significantly short of its intent. Research has documented that more than half of all claims filed under the FRA have either been rejected or remain pending. The SDLCs and DLCs – which include Panchayat representatives – have often failed to adequately support Gram Sabhas and FRCs in the critical tasks of claim-making, verification, and mapping.

A particularly troubling pattern is that the decisions of Gram Sabhas and FRCs, which are supposed to be the foundation of the entire process, are frequently treated as non-binding by government officials. Studies from Himachal Pradesh have found that in SDLC and DLC meetings, instances of dissent by non-official members were not recorded, and gram sabha resolutions were routinely overridden. As the Economic and Political Weekly noted, in matters of diverting forest land for infrastructure projects, officials rarely rejected Gram Sabha decisions – but in matters of individual and community rights claims, the same Gram Sabha’s voice was routinely marginalised.

Capacity constraints are real. Rough maps prepared by Gram Sabhas often lack technical accuracy, and the intensive documentation process is burdensome for largely illiterate tribal communities. Large-scale training and capacity building of Gram Sabhas, FRCs, and Panchayat-level functionaries remains an unmet need that directly affects the quality of claims processing at the ground level.

PESA and its reinforcement of Gram Sabha powers 🔗

The FRA does not operate in isolation. The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) – which extends a modified Panchayati Raj framework to Scheduled (tribal) Areas – is a complementary statute that reinforces Gram Sabha authority. PESA empowers Gram Sabhas to safeguard community resources and mandates consultation with Gram Sabhas before any land acquisition or resettlement in tribal areas. It also allows hamlet-level Gram Sabhas in tribal areas, which the FRA explicitly incorporates. Together, PESA and the FRA create an interlocking legal framework for local self-governance over land and forest resources in Scheduled Areas – one that gives tribal communities both the procedural tools and the substantive rights to manage their own affairs.

What effective Panchayat engagement looks like 🔗

For the FRA to work as intended, Gram Panchayats and Gram Sabhas need to function as genuine partners rather than parallel or competing structures. The Gram Panchayat’s role is enabling and administrative – convening the first Gram Sabha meeting, providing the Secretary’s presence, facilitating access to government records and maps, and ensuring that higher-level committees include elected Panchayat representatives who are accountable to local communities. The Gram Sabha’s role is deliberative and decisive – it carries the democratic legitimacy that no bureaucratic committee can replicate.

States like Maharashtra and Odisha have shown that when both these institutions function as envisioned, the results are transformative. Communities protect forests more effectively, livelihoods improve, and conservation outcomes are better than under pure state management. The FRA’s design correctly recognises that the people who have lived with, depended on, and conserved forests for generations are the most credible and capable managers of those forests – provided the institutional framework actually empowers rather than merely consults them.

What do you think? Given that the FRA places significant decision-making authority in the Gram Sabha, should Panchayat institutions be given stronger formal powers to enforce Gram Sabha resolutions at higher committee levels – or does that risk centralising what is meant to be a community-driven process? And with over half of all claims still pending or rejected across India, what structural changes would most effectively strengthen the role of local governance in forest rights implementation?

References

1. https://tribal.nic.in/fra.aspx
2. https://idronline.org/features/rights/idr-explains-forest-rights-act-fra/
3. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=77574
4. https://practiceconnect.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/governance-mechanisms-in-the-forest-rights-act-2006-a-review/
5. https://forestrights.nic.in/pdf/FAQ.pdf
6. https://cag.gov.in/uploads/download_audit_report/2024/20.Chapter-7—Copy-066e27b7becfd88.73496908.pdf
7. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/Paper2/forest-rights-act-2006
8. https://compass.rauias.com/current-affairs/guidelines-management-community-forest-resources-forest-rights-act/
9. https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CFR-and-the-Pandemic_GS-Lead-the-Way-Vol.2_Oct.2020.pdf
10. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/forests/how-the-supreme-court-order-on-forest-rights-act-impacts-its-implementation-and-forest-dependent-communities
11. https://www.ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2309108.pdf
12. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/forest-rights-act-state-appropriation-land-rights