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Mar 19, 2025 | 
thewire.in | Sukriti Vats |India Spend
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Mar 19, 2025 | 
indiaspend.com | Sukriti VatsLoading.. |Sukriti Vats
New Delhi: Sixteen years after the state-run Coal India Limited (CIL) first issued detailed mine-closure guidelines, only three coal mines in India have been formally closed. In fact, out of a list of 299 non-operational mines identified for closure by CIL in January 2024, only eight had applied for formal closure by August last year, a response to our Right-to-Information (RTI) request revealed.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
maktoobmedia.com | Sukriti Vats
An eerie silence persists in the thickly forested buffer zone of Pench Tiger Reserve. Within eight months, six deaths were reported from tiger attacks on tribal communities living in Maharashtra’s Jhinjhariya, Tuyapar, and Deolapar villages in Ramtek taluka, among other areas. In response, forest authorities have restricted the villagers’ movements and alienated them from their farms and grazing lands—the very sources of their livelihood.
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Nov 3, 2024 | 
thewire.in | Sukriti Vats
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Sukriti Vats
Sukriti VatsSukriti Vats is a writing fellow at the Land Conflict Watch, an independent network of researchers studying land conflicts, climate change and natural resource governance in India
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Sukriti Vats
Technically, a deemed forest is defined as a forest, regardless of its ownership, recognition, or notification status. The Supreme Court has temporarily halted the felling of trees in Sector 21 of Delhi’s Dwarka for the redevelopment of the Bijwasan rail terminal in response to an appeal from a 23-year-old environmental activist Naveen Solanki, who claimed that the land was actually a deemed forest.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
landconflictwatch.org | Sukriti Vats
In January 2024, residents of Khedasan village in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat began receiving notices from the District Level Committee (DLC), which is one of the bodies constituted to decide on Forest Rights claims. These notices informed the villagers that their claims had been rejected as no possession was found as per the GEER Foundation report.
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Jul 15, 2024 | 
newslaundry.com | Sukriti Vats |India Spend
In January this year Darangi Bhera Sarubhai, a resident of Khedasan village in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district, received a notice informing him that his Individual Forest Rights (IFR) claim had been rejected. The 70-year-old was one of 30 individuals from Khedasan, a Schedule V village, whose claims were rejected on the grounds that their possession of the land could not be verified via satellite imagery.
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Jul 9, 2024 | 
indiaspend.com | Sukriti VatsLoading.. |Sukriti Vats
Himmatnagar, Sabarkantha: In January this year Darangi Bhera Sarubhai, a resident of Khedasan village in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district, received a notice informing him that his Individual Forest Rights (IFR) claim had been rejected. The 70-year-old was one of 30 individuals from Khedasan, a Schedule V village, whose claims were rejected on the grounds that their possession of the land could not be verified via satellite imagery.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
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New Delhi: Twenty-seven years after the Supreme Court first directed states to identify and classify unique ecologies as “forests”, the Rajasthan government finally notified its sacred groves, known as Orans, as “deemed forest”, on February 1, 2024. Orans are a vital part of community life in Rajasthan--community forests that are sometimes centuries old, traditionally seen as sacred, preserved and managed by rural communities, with local laws and rules governing their use.
