The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, commonly known as the FRA, is a landmark legislation in the history of independent India, as it attempts to undo the multiple historical injustices imposed on forest-dwelling communities in India. In particular, the Community Forest Resource (CFR) Rights (or CFRR) provisions in sec 3(1)(i) recognise the rights of forest-dwelling communities to access, collectively manage, protect, and conserve forests that they have been traditionally using. Instead of allowing the government to impose its felling oriented or exclusion oriented working plans on the forest landscape or imposing its agenda through pseudo-participatory processes such as Joint Forest Management (JFM), or leaving the forests de facto open-access, the CFRR provisions enable a statutory process of decentralised forest management by the gram sabha. The gram sabhas would then develop and implement their own CFR management plans like the Mendha lekha and Pachgaon villages in Maharashtra.