The Supreme Court directs states to reclaim the reserved forest allocated to private parties

The SC directs the chief secretary of states across the country and the managers of the Union Territory to form a special investigation team to check whether forest land owned by their respective income departments has been allocated to private parties for non-forest activities. |Picture source: Special arrangement

In a judgment, the Supreme Court directed states and coalition territorial administrators across the country to form a special investigation team to check whether forest land owned by their respective tax departments has been allocated to private parties for non-forest activities.

Three judges led by India’s Chief Justice BR Gavai directed the authorities to regain such woodland from private and entity and hand it over to the forest department.

“If it is found that the ownership of the land is not in the greater public interest, the state government/union territory should recover the cost of the land from the people/institutions allocated to them and use it for forest development purposes,” the Chief Justice Justice Justice Justice Official, the Official Justice Department, enforced the ruling, the charges.

The entire exercise must be completed within one year.

“Instructing the administrators of all states and all union territories to form a special team to ensure that all these transfers are made within one year from today. Unnecessary statements below should only use these lands for therapeutic purposes for the purpose of forests.”

Use forest land for commercial purposes

The directive was announced to be illegally allocated, with the allocation of reserve forest land on 11.89 hectares of land in Kondhwa Budruk in Pune region of Maharashtra, sold for agricultural purposes in 1998 and sold to builders next year.

Chief Justice Gavai said the case was “how the connection between politicians, bureaucrats and builders led to the conversion of precious forest land for commercial purposes…”

In 2007, the Supreme Court revoked the environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to builders and also canceled the illegal environmental clearance. The court ordered the land to be considered to be owned by the state’s tax office and would be transferred to the forest department.

“People noticed that a large amount of land notified as ‘forest land’ is still in the tax department. This situation created a lot of complexity. Despite the boycott of the forest department, the tax bureau still allocated the land to private/institutions to achieve private/institutions to sentence vital green cover.

The court said there was also a report from the Central Authorization Commission, which was documented by its amicus of the court, senior advocate K. Parameshwar, indicating that “many of forest land has been allocated to private/institutions for non-forgotten purposes”.

Although the Supreme Court order of December 12, 1996 reached that “all ongoing activities in any forest in any state in the country must be stopped immediately without the prior approval of the central government”. Chief Justice Gavai said in his judgment: “Any such distribution after December 12, 1996 is legally unsustainable.”