Forest Rights Act, 2006 vs. Conservation Amendments: The Constitutional Battle Over Adivasi Land Rights after the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023

The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 has reopened one of the oldest fault lines in Indian environmental governance: the contest between centralised forest conservation and the statutorily recognised land and governance rights of Adivasi and other traditional forest dwelling communities. The Forest Rights Act, 2006 was enacted as a restitutionary statute. It acknowledged that colonial and post colonial forest law had inflicted a historical injustice on forest dwellers and placed the Gram Sabha at the centre of forest governance. The 2023 amendment travels in the opposite direction. By confining the application of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 to recorded and notified forests, by exempting large categories of land and projects from the requirement of prior approval, and by operating alongside the Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022, which decoupled forest clearance from prior compliance with the Forest Rights Act, the amendment narrows the protective field within which Adivasi rights operate. This paper maps the two statutory regimes, analyses their collision, and evaluates the constitutional challenge pending before the Supreme Court in Ashok Kumar Sharma v. Union of India. It argues that the amendment is vulnerable under Articles 14 and 21 and under the special constitutional protection of Scheduled Areas in Article 244 read with the Fifth Schedule, and it proposes a reconciliation that treats recognised forest rights as the baseline of any conservation regime.