The villagers, numbering around 3,000, attended the function Wednesday when village head Devaji Tofa was handed over a transit passbook, enabling the villagers to sell the bamboo from the region in the markets.
The transit passes are required to take the bamboo from the village to the market, but the state forest department had refused the facility to the villagers for over one-and-a-half years.
‘This is a historic occasion which serves to empower the local villagers and make them economically stronger,' Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said on the occasion.
Chavan said that though Gadchiroli with 78 percent forest cover is the greenest district in the state, it is also the most economically backward.
Ironically, the green cover was restricting the scope of taking up developmental projects in the district and this in turn was giving rise to the problems of Maoists here, Chavan remarked. Read the full report here.
Source: Calcutta Tube, Gadchiroli (Maharashtra).
