Margao: Nearly nine months after chief minister Pramod Sawant’s Dec 19, 2025 deadline to clear all pending claims under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) lapsed, the tribal welfare department has told the state legislative assembly that no fresh timeline has been fixed to dispose of the 4,467 claims still pending across the state, more than 44% of all claims filed so far.Replying to an unstarred question tabled by MLA Nilesh Cabral, tribal welfare minister Ramesh Tawadkar placed on record data showing that of the 10,384 individual and community claims filed under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, only 3,932 have been approved by district-level committees (DLCs) till date, while 1,942 have been rejected and 43 withdrawn by claimants.Taluka-wise, Canacona has the highest pendency in the state at 1,476 claims, followed by Quepem (1,000), Dharbandora (805), Sanguem (707) and Sattari (388), while Ponda has the least at 91.To a question on whether any timeline had been fixed for disposal of the pending claims, govt’s reply came in the negative. It added that settlement of claims and issuing of titles “is a time-consuming process” and that rights would be recognised “in due course” as per the Act and rules.On why claims continue to languish, govt cited the same set of constraints flagged in earlier assembly replies over the past year. Goa’s monsoon, from June to Sep, makes forests inaccessible for spot verification due to overgrown vegetation. Other issues include a lack of quorum at gram sabhas and incomplete documentation by claimants. Family and legal disputes also hamper demarcation. In some cases, claimants themselves do not cooperate with survey teams.Claims are being rejected primarily where land is found to be revenue or private land rather than forest land, where no evidence of cultivation is found during spot verification, over duplicate or overlapping claims, where disputes are pending before courts, or where claimants cannot produce evidence of occupation predating Dec 13, 2005, the cut-off date under the Act.The department listed a string of steps taken over the past two years to speed up disposal, including the engagement of a private agency for survey and demarcation, dedicated committees under joint mamlatdars in six talukas, allowances for Forest Rights Committee (FRC) members to encourage participation in spot verification, and a special sub-divisional level committee meeting held jointly by the collectors of South Goa and Kushavati districts with the directorate of tribal welfare and the tribal research institute.
