'Biggest mass eviction' of tribespeople could see EIGHT MILLION booted out of their forest homes to ‘protect woodland’ after landmark court ruling in India

The order affects more than 1.1 million households, with experts estimate this could mean more than 8 million people will now be evicted.

That number could rise as a number of Indian states have yet to provide numbers on how many people will be affected.

Survival International, which campaigns for the rights of tribal people, condemned the evictions.

“This judgement is a death sentence for millions of tribal people in India, land theft on an epic scale, and a monumental injustice,” said director Stephen Corry.

“It will lead to wholesale misery, impoverishment, disease and death, an urgent humanitarian crisis, and it will do nothing to save the forests which these tribespeople have protected for generations.”

The court ruling is in response to requests by Indian conservation groups to declare invalid the Forest Rights Act which the government didn’t oppose.

The law gives forest-dwelling people rights to their ancestral lands, including in protected areas.

This judgement is a death sentence for millions of tribal people in India

Mr Corry said: “Will the big conservation organizations like WWF and WCS condemn this ruling and pledge to fight it, or will they be complicit in the biggest mass eviction in the name of conservation, ever?”

Under the landmark Forest Rights Act, at least 150 million people could have had their rights recognised to about 154,000 square miles of forest land.

The conservation groups said state governments should make families prove they could prove their claim to be live on ancestral land

They claimed tribal people in 17 states had encroached illegally on these protected areas, jeopardising efforts to protect wildlife and forests.

Land rights and forest rights have come to the fore in recent state elections, and unrest among farmers and villagers who make up a big voting bloc, could hurt Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, analysts say.

India has more than 100 million indigenous people, who are also known as Adivasis, or original inhabitants.

Opposition leaders had earlier written to the Tribal Affairs minister, saying they were "dismayed at the utterly indifferent and callous attitude" of the federal government in relation to case.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party which had enacted Forest Rights Act, had earlier criticised the government for being "a silent spectator" in the Supreme Court.

"It is showing its intention of driving out hundreds of thousands of tribals and poor farmers from the forests," he tweeted.

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