In defense of land rights: A monitoring report on land conflicts in six Asian countries 74 was this lack of recognition that had led to conversion and depletion of the most important forest lands in the country. However, even after recognition of their rights by legislation, these rights are far from being secure. Hence, the major purpose of this study is to collate, describe, and analyze the various land conflicts occurring in the country today. The characteristics and dynamics of the conflicts – the parties involved, the type of lands covered, and the causes of conflict – are all part of the inquiry. For this purpose, there is an analysis of major land conflicts in sample States in each region of the country. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study relied on secondary sources of data, with the major source being the Land Conflict Watch portal (https://www.landconflictwatch.org/) which is a network of researchers and journalists across India that records all the major ongoing land conflicts in the country. It has an account of 600 plus of such ongoing conflicts in the country. Further, other major studies analyzing data relating to land conflicts and corresponding newspaper reports were also utilized. This study analyses all ongoing land conflicts in the selected sample States in India. Hence, the time frame for the data collected are the ongoing land conflict cases from around 1970 to 2018. The graphs and tables provided in this report were a product of data compiled as provided in the website of Land Conflict Watch which were corroborated by newspaper articles and reports on the issue as far as available. The States of the country are categorized into the regions of the North, South, East, West, Central, and North-East. The data of some of the States from these regions are taken as sample data for the analysis. These data are further analyzed along certain parameters such as the duration of the conflict, type of land involved, etc. ANGOC HISTORICAL BACKGROUND India is a country where a large population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. However, the major portion of the land is already occupied or owned either by landowners or farmers. Thus, when the government needs to carry out any developmental work, it has to acquire land from the landowners or the farmers. In the history of land acquisition in India, the first instance was in the context of introducing railways to serve the interests of the British under the Bengal Regulation Act of 1824. However, the major development came with the Act of 1894, which was amended in 1923 and then enforced until 2013. But again, it was conceived with the idea of serving the interests of the British, and failed to look into the interests of farmers/landowners. There were