This Act gives local village communities (Gram sabhas) a vital role in the process of its implementation. A village level ‘Forest Rights Committee’ appointed by the Gram Sabha has been entrusted with the task of accepting and verifying all individual claims for forest lands under occupation of tribals and preparing a comprehensive report with field verification panchnama and map of each plot. It also has to prepare claims for community rights over forest resources. In the villages where we have strong organizational base for many years, we gave intensive training to the Forest Rights Committees (FRCs) of the villages regarding how to verify the claims, how to arrive at the findings, how to put them down in writing, and finally how the Gram Sabha would arrive at the conclusions to approve/ partially approve or disapprove the claims and make resolutions regarding them. With their help and input, we also prepared another 20 page guidelines (see the Guidelines – FRCs) containing various formats, like statements of applicant, of village elders and witnesses, etc, Panchnama, Rojkam, model findings by the FRC, model resolution by the GS, etc., which were extensively used by almost all the FRCS throughout the state. About 2400 representatives of around 950 villages participated in the training camps we held in the tribal belt of the state.
