The Forest Rights Act, 2006 is silent on gram sabha 'consent' yet it has become central to forest clearance disputes. Examine the legal basis of this practice and its implications for tribal rights versus infrastructure development.

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 makes the Gram Sabha the authority to determine forest rights, but nowhere uses the word "consent" for diversion of forest land — a silence now at the heart of clearance disputes.

Legal basis of the consent practice

• The FRA's text offers only indirect anchors: Section 4(5) bars eviction until recognition is complete, Section 6 vests claim determination in the Gram Sabha with appeals to SDLC and DLC, and Section 3(1)(i) grants communities the right to protect and conserve forests [1][2].
• Section 3(2) is the only place where diversion (for schools, dispensaries, power and telecom lines and other public utilities) expressly requires a Gram Sabha recommendation — a narrow, not general, consent clause [1].
• The generalised requirement of an FRA-completion certificate plus "informed consent" before Stage-II clearance flows from executive forest-clearance guidelines and the Forest (Conservation) Rules, administered through MoEFCC's process, not from the parent Act [3].
• Judicially, the Supreme Court in the Niyamgiri case (Orissa Mining Corporation v. MoEF, 2013) read a consent role for Gram Sabhas into the FRA read with PESA, giving the practice authority the statute itself did not spell out [4].
• Consistently, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the nodal ministry, informed the Ministry of Power (August 31, 2026) that the FRA contains no provision for gram sabha consent at Stage-II and that the matter lies outside its purview [5].

Implications for tribal rights

• Consent operationalises free, prior and informed consent and the Section 4(5) safeguard against involuntary displacement of forest dwellers [1].
• Because it rests on rules rather than statute, it can be diluted by executive notification, without parliamentary scrutiny — weakening a right-holder's remedy [3].

Implications for infrastructure development

• A Parliamentary panel found forest clearance for NHPC projects averages 106 months, delaying hydropower capacity central to energy security [5].
• Inter-ministerial ambiguity — Power approaching MoTA over a MoEFCC-administered rule — compounds procedural drift [5].

The dispute is less about tribal rights versus growth than about an unlegislated safeguard resting on shifting executive ground. Codifying a graded, time-bound and reasoned consent procedure within the FRA, with digital tracking of claim settlement, would give communities certainty and projects predictability — honouring both the Act's promise of undoing historical injustice and the developmental mandate of Article 21 read with the Directive Principles.