Van Gujjars will be homeless next summer
in the first week of May, 200-odd Van Gujjar families started moving towards their summer homes in Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand. They had been stranded around Vikasnagar near Dehradun before a response to a right to information application revealed that Uttaranchal's forest department had rescinded an earlier decision to bar Van Gujjars from entering their summer homes in the state. It's a temporary respite though. Uttaranchal's forest department has made it clear that it will not allow Van Gujjars to enter the state's forest next year.
Van Gujjars are traditional migrants, practising transhumance