A violent confrontation between Adivasi residents and a joint team of Forest Department, Revenue, and Police officials in Padaliya village, Banaskantha district, on 13 December 2025, was not a mere law and order breakdown but a direct consequence of the state's systemic failure to implement the Forest Rights Act (FRA), according to a damning fact-finding report released by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Gujarat.
The incident, which left several officials injured and government vehicles damaged, erupted when authorities arrived with heavy machinery to clear land for plantation, a site villagers claim has been cultivated for years and is subject to pending forest rights claims. The PUCL team, which visited the village on 24 December, has documented a sequence of alleged administrative lapses, illegal coercive action, and a biased criminal justice response that has left an entire community criminalized and living in fear.
At the heart of the dispute is land claimed by Parmar Shakariben Lalabhai (Shakari Ben), a 53-year-old Adivasi woman whose name appears as claimant number 72 in the official Padaliya Forest Rights Committee register dated 24 February 2023. The Gram Sabha had identified 173 claimants, including Shakari Ben, and forwarded the list to the Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) Office for further processing.
However, the PUCL report reveals a critical administrative paralysis: the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC), the statutory body responsible for verifying these claims, has been non-functional for a considerable period, and claimants have yet to receive the formal forms required to complete their applications. This has stalled the entire recognition process, leaving families in a prolonged state of legal uncertainty despite the Gram Sabha having completed its role.
Tensions first boiled over on 5 December 2025, when forest officials entered land near the village and began uprooting vegetation using a JCB machine. According to FIR No. 11195002250629, registered the following day, the officials were removing Gando Baval and Lantana. Crucially, the PUCL report notes that this FIR fails to specify the survey number or precise location of the land, an omission that obscures whether the activity occurred on areas claimed under the FRA. Villagers who objected to the work were met with a criminal case naming seven individuals and approximately 100 "unknown persons."
A meeting on 11 December between officials and villagers failed to resolve the dispute. Two days later, on 13 December, a large contingent of forest staff, revenue officials, and police, accompanied by two JCB machines and led by an Executive Magistrate, returned to the site, identified in the subsequent FIR as Survey No. 9 in Viramveri Round. Villagers, including women, gathered to protest, reiterating that the land was under claim.
What followed, according to testimonies collected by PUCL, was a brutal crackdown. Shakari Ben narrated to the team that she watched officials demolish her dwelling and damage the irrigation well that had sustained her family for years—a well her husband had died trying to deepen. When she pleaded with them to stop and offered to show documents of her claim, she was allegedly pushed aside. Villagers stated that police resorted to a lathi charge and fired tear gas shells to disperse the crowd. It was in this chaos, they claim, that stone-pelting occurred, leading to injuries to officials including Police Inspector R. B. Gohil and Assistant Conservator of Forests Jigar Modi, and damage to vehicles, some of which were reportedly set on fire.
The state's response, the PUCL report argues, has been disproportionately punitive and one-sided. Following the incident, police registered a second FIR naming 26 specific individuals and, in a sweeping move, approximately 500 "unknown persons." This omnibus inclusion, the report states, has created an atmosphere of terror in the village, with residents avoiding going out even for medical essentials for fear of arbitrary arrest. The report highlights this as an attempt at the en masse criminalization of an entire Adivasi community.
This differential treatment is a clear indicator, the report asserts, that the full might of criminal law is being used to suppress resistance against systemic neglect. The incident is not isolated but symptomatic of a wider malaise. The PUCL report places it within the context of Gujarat's overall FRA implementation, citing official government data showing that of 190,242 claims filed in the state, a staggering 84,387 (44.36 percent) remain pending. The non-functional SDLC in Padaliya is a microcosm of this institutional paralysis, which, the report argues, creates a vacuum where forest departments feel emboldened to undertake land-altering activities, directly leading to conflict.
The fact-finding team, comprising Anand Yagnik, Prasad Chacko, Neha Shah, and others, has made several urgent recommendations. They demand that all coercive action on land under FRA claim be halted immediately, citing the statutory protection against eviction under Section 4(5) of the Act, which remains in force until the verification process is complete. They call for the immediate reactivation of the SDLC to process Padaliya's pending claims within a defined timeframe. They also demand an independent inquiry into the 13 December incident and the withdrawal of the omnibus FIR against 500 unnamed individuals, which they describe as being "weaponized" against the village.
Most critically, they insist that Shakari Ben's complaint be registered and investigated fairly, and that the Forest Department be compelled to disclose the precise survey numbers and GPS coordinates of the land in question to determine conclusively if it overlaps with her claim. The report starkly concludes that the violence of 13 December was a direct and violent consequence of the state's failure to uphold the law.
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*Freelance writer
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