In pursuance of the decisions taken by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs regarding the development of an integrated, end-to-end digital platform for effective implementation and monitoring of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, the Ministry has been actively engaging with innovation-driven initiatives to advance digitization, geospatial integration and decision-support systems for FRA governance.

In this context, the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell has launched the 8th edition of the Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2025, a flagship national initiative aimed at harnessing student innovation to address complex governance challenges through technology-driven solutions. Under the Software category, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) placed a problem statement for the development of an AI-powered FRA Atlas and a WebGIS-based Decision Support System (DSS) to support integrated monitoring of Individual Forest Rights (IFR), Community Rights (CR) and Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights, in line with the Ministry’s broader roadmap for digitization, geotagging and convergence of FRA records.

As part of the post-Hackathon engagement programme, and to operationalize the above decisions through field-based validation, a meeting was held on 2 January 2026 at the Collector Office, Nashik. The meeting brought together officials from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Maharashtra State Tribal Development Department and participating SIH student teams from Pune, Kurnool and Indore. During the session, the State Government demonstrated the Maharashtra FRA Portal, highlighting its functional architecture, practical utility in FRA implementation and monitoring, and best practices emerging from the State, including success stories of recognized patta holders and the overall status of FRA implementation across Maharashtra.

To further strengthen evidence-based design of the proposed national FRA Digital Platform, a two-day field visit has been scheduled for the participating student teams to selected FRA-implemented villages in Nashik district. The field exercise will enable direct interaction with Gram Sabha members and district-level functionaries and facilitate the collection and documentation of ground-level data, workflows and implementation challenges. These inputs will inform the refinement of the AI-enabled FRA Atlas and WebGIS-based DSS conceptualized under SIH 2025, ensuring alignment with field realities and statutory processes. Thereafter, the participating teams will proceed to New Delhi, where a two-day Hackathon will be organized at the National Tribal Research Institute (NTRI). During this phase, the student teams will work towards finalizing the functional design and features of the FRA web portal, under the guidance of the Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

This post-SIH engagement reflects the Ministry’s commitment to translating policy decisions on FRA digitization into actionable, field-validated digital solutions, in keeping with the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of Viksit Bharat through inclusive growth and empowered tribal communities. It also reinforces the Hon’ble Union Minister for Tribal Affairs’ focus on leveraging technology for data-driven governance, transparency and effective monitoring, while fostering collaborative learning between government institutions, academia and tribal communities to strengthen implementation of the Forest Rights Act and advance inclusive and sustainable tribal development.

 

 

RN/

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