Multiple tribal associations, including the Adivasi Hakk Samvardhan Samiti, Shramik Mukti Sangh, and the Van Hakk Samiti, held a meeting on Thursday demanding to cancel all eviction notices sent to the Adivasi settlements in Goregaon’s Aarey Milk Colony after tribal hamlets recently received multiple notices from the forest department stating that they have encroached on forest land, which the tribals have called home for generations, and cultivated illegally. The notices have come after 812 acres of the colony have been declared as forest land.

Dinesh Habale, president of Van Hakk Samiti, said, “The notices state that the residents who planted trees or are cultivating in the area have done so illegally. Why is this not said when people from outside Aarey come for plantation drives and all?” “The authorities either want us to move or put us under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), neither of which we want or deserve.”

A tribal hamlet in forested Aarey Milk Colony. FILE PIC