The government enacted the Legal Aid Services Act, 2000 which aims at legal aid to the poor litigants. But this Act remains largely unimplemented due to lack of awareness about the law and lack of institutional capacity to deliver the services. Article 27 Minority rights 48. This right covers persons belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities, in community with others, to enjoy their culture, profess and practice their religion or use their language.In recent past, many incidents of attacking and destroying Hindu temples by Islamic extremists are reported. Bangladesh is home to as many as 45 distinct ethnic minority groups, which constitute two percent of the total population.41 Their largest concentration is in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where 13 different groups constitute majority over the Bangali population. Rest of the ethnic minority groups live in the plain lands, and in plain land, these ethnic minority groups are dispersed in different districts of Bangladesh. The ethnic minority community in the plain lands is one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable segment of the society in terms of almost all major development indicators, such as income; employment; poverty; health; education; access to justice etc. It cannot be denied that they face discrimination in access to education, employment, and enjoyment of civil and political rights. 49. However, in the plain lands, indigenous people face persistent land and resource grabbing as well as endangerment of their livelihood and culture.42 As a result, indigenous people of the plain land are poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Land grabbing takes place through producing fake documents by local influential people. Ethnic minority communities living on the plains have continuously been thrown out of their ancestral lands, allegedly by Government agencies, influential quarters and private organizations using different techniques including use of forged documents and forcibly ousting them from their lands while the government was expropriating their lands for various development projects. Land acquisition by the Government for its socalled social afforestation has made the highest number of ethnic families landless in the northwestern areas. Lands used as common property, graveyards, and shrines were also grabbed. The increasing landlessness of the indigenous community has a severe effect on fulfillment of their basic needs. The majority of the indigenous people’s household income basically depends on agricultural work. But their food security and habitat are at stake, as a result of land-grabbing and loss of their traditional livelihood.43 50. There are three kinds of ownerships recognized by the constitution of Bangladesh such as, state ownership, co-operative ownership and private ownership. However the collective ownership which is prevalent amongst the ethnic minority groups, is not recognized in the constitution. This ownership should be legally protected as it is very important to them in term of 41 Sukanto Sen, Avijit Roy and Silvanus Lamin, Indigenous People of Plain Land:, BARSIK, Dhaka (2007), p. 16. See generally, Dr. Mizanur Rahman (ed.), The Garos: Struggling to Survive in the Valley of Death, Dhaka, ELCOP, 2006. 43 “The state of Land Rights of Indigenous People”, 2008. The survey conducted jointly by the Jatiya Adibashi Parishad, Incidin Bangladesh and Jahangirnagar University’s Department of Anthropology, of the north-western minority communities since January 2008. 42 23