Prakash Gupta from Surguja in Chhattisgarh says authorities have demolished houses of some poor dalits and adivasis built on forest land in a village. According to Forest Rights Act no action is allowed in forest land without permission from Central Ministry of forest. These people were living on the forest land for sometime and authorities accept that they have broken these houses under pressure from powerful people. For more on the case please contact Prakash at 07697852665

Raja from Satna says near his village illegal mining work in the forest area is going from last 4 months. People work in the night and stop work during the day. He says I have informed the forest ranger about it and he says he will catch them on spot. Now it is 11.30 in the night the mining work is going on and Ranger is not picking up my phone after picking it up once. I want to bring it to the notice of higher forest officials. Are forest laws only for poor which puts so many restrictions on them? Raja can be reached on 0997745588

Rajesh Tripathi from Raigarh says with connivance of forest officials at least a dozen industries are working inside the reserve forest there. Permission for use of reserver forest is only given by central government and in some cases officials have changed the boundary of forest to help industries. He claims at least 12,000 hectare of reserve forest is affected by these industries and demands a CBI enquiry. For more please contact Rajesh ji at 09424183510

District Forest Officer Dantewada Vivek Acharya has sent a message saying no Tree Fern was damaged in Dantewada as reported on Swara. He accepts that NMDC had put some pipes in the Bio protected zone without permission but they removed the pipes after instruction

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Himanshu Kumar is telling us about an adivasi rally he attended in Mumbai last week. He says adivasis from all over Maharashtra walked for 15 days with their food on their head to reach Mumbai.He says adivasis are unhappy over non implementation of forest rights act. A delegation went to meet the chief minister who announced a committee comprising of tribal representatives who will now keep an eye on the implementation of the law