Form sits to examine the status of woodland: Supreme Court to State, UTS

The Supreme Court’s observations of the Supreme Court that retains woodlands are for any private purposes. File | Image source: Hindu

The Supreme Court on Thursday (May 15, 2025) directed all states and union territories to form a special investigation team to check whether any reserved forest land is allocated to any private group for non-treatment purposes.

Chief Justice Br Gavai and Justices Augustine George Masih and K. Vinod Chandran directed the states and UTS to take steps to retrieve such land and hand it over to the Ministry of Forests.

“It is not in the greater public interest to find that regaining ownership of the land will not be in the greater public interest, and the state government/union territory should recover the costs of the above-mentioned land from the people/institutions allocated to them and use the above-mentioned amounts for forest development purposes,” the bench said.

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It also directs the Chief Secretary of all state and UTS Administrators to form a special team to ensure that all these transfers are made within one year from today.

The bench said the land was only used for afforestation purposes.

“We further guide the principal secretary of the administrators of all states and all union territories to form a special investigation team with the aim of checking whether the income department has any reserved woodland, any other private/institutions other than the tax department allocated for any other purpose, for any other purpose.”

The Supreme Court’s directive is a judgment made on issues related to the preservation of forest land in Pune.

“The current example is about how the link between politicians, bureaucrats and builders leads to the conversion of precious forest land for commercial purposes into breeders of people belonging to backward classes whose ancestors acquired agricultural land for public purposes,” the bench said.