Agartala, May 29: Tripura Governor N Indrasena Reddy on May 28 launched the Northeast’s first Digital Forest Rights Act (FRA) Atlas along with a Tribal Development Atlas during the inauguration of “Janjatiya Garima Utsav 2026 — Birsa Lives in New Bharat Week”, emphasising the use of technology and scientific planning to safeguard tribal rights and welfare.
The digital FRA Atlas, developed with assistance from the Tripura Space Application Centre, has been designed to improve implementation, tracking and monitoring of individual and community forest rights across the state. During the programme, the Tribal Welfare Department also released an FRA Atlas booklet.
Addressing the gathering, the Governor said the ideals of Birsa Munda relating to tribal identity, forests and indigenous rights continue to remain relevant even in the modern era. He described the event as more than a commemorative celebration and stated that Tripura had emerged as a model state in recognising individual forest rights.
Tripura Tribal Welfare Minister Bikash Debbarma said the department was focusing on welfare programmes, education and skill development initiatives in remote tribal regions. Senior officials present at the programme included Tribal Welfare Department Secretary Dr K Shashi Kumar, Governor’s Secretary U K Chakma and department director Subhashish Das.
The launch comes amid a broader national initiative led by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to digitise FRA implementation processes. Under this initiative, the ministry had introduced a problem statement during the Smart India Hackathon 2025 seeking development of an AI-powered FRA Atlas and WebGIS-based decision-support system for monitoring Individual Forest Rights, Community Rights and Community Forest Resource rights.
Student teams from Pune, Kurnool and Indore later visited FRA-implemented villages to collect field-level data, which is now being incorporated into a national FRA Digital Platform being developed under the supervision of the National Tribal Research Institute.
Separately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met representatives of the Janjati Suraksha Manch in New Delhi on Thursday and discussed issues related to tribal welfare and empowerment, praising their efforts towards tribal communities in a post shared on X.
