The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act,2006 (hereafter FRA, 2006) was a landmark legislation passed by the Indian Parliament to recognize and vest the rights of the forest dwelling community which includes forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have been residing in forest land for generations. This Act aims at recognizing the individual and collective rights over forest customarily enjoyed by them. The FRA recognizes three types of rights of the forest dwellers; Rights over forest land, Community rights and Rights over Community Forest Resources. But there are several factors which are impeding the actual process of implementation of FRA in West Bengal. In terms of CFR, West Bengal is among the low performing states, achieved less than 2% of minimum potential of CFR implementation.1In this state 45,130 titles were distributed and 96,587 claims got rejected.

Two community consultation workshops were organized in Dhotrey and Rimbik village of Darjeeling district on 1st and 2nd June of 2022 by Legal Initiatives for Forest and Environment and Prameya Foundation with an intention to understand the specific issues in the realm of implementation of FRA, 2006 among the forest-dwelling community.