Specified Plants

In one line

The eight sections that put a plant on the same footing as an animal, and let a Scheduled Tribe member pick it anyway.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 17A provides that no person shall wilfully pick, uproot, damage, destroy, acquire or collect any specified plant from any forest land or any notified area, nor possess, sell, offer for sale, transfer by gift or otherwise, or transport any specified plant, alive or dead, or any part or derivative of it, with a proviso permitting a member of a Scheduled Tribe, subject to Chapter IV, to pick, collect or possess in the district where he resides any specified plant or part or derivative for his bona fide personal use; and section 17H makes every specified plant in respect of which an offence has been committed the property of the State Government, or of the Central Government where it came from a Central sanctuary or National Park.

What a specified plant is

Section 2(27): a "specified plant" means any plant specified in Schedule III. So the class is defined by a Schedule, exactly as wild animals are, and section 61 gives the power to alter the entries.

Section 2(37), "wild life", includes any animal, aquatic or land vegetation which forms part of any habitat, and section 2, "habitat", includes the vegetation which is the natural home of any wild animal or specified plant. The Act's own definitions therefore treat plants as wildlife, and the chapter is where that shows.

The prohibition and the tribal proviso

Section 17A(a) forbids wilfully picking, uprooting, damaging, destroying, acquiring or collecting a specified plant from any forest land and any area specified by notification by the Central Government.

Section 17A(b) forbids possessing, selling, offering for sale, transferring by gift or otherwise, and transporting a specified plant, whether alive or dead, or any part or derivative of it. That limb has no territorial qualification at all: it does not matter where the plant came from.

The proviso. Nothing in the section prevents a member of a Scheduled Tribe, subject to the provisions of Chapter IV, from picking, collecting or possessing in the district he resides any specified plant or part or derivative for his bona fide personal use.

Read that proviso closely, because three limits are built into it. It protects picking, collecting and possessing, not selling or transporting. It is confined to the district in which he resides. And it is for bona fide personal use only. It is also "subject to the provisions of Chapter IV", so inside a sanctuary or National Park the sanctuary rules prevail.