SC has directed Chief Secretaries of States and Administrators of Union Territories across the country to form Special Investigation Teams to examine if forest lands in the possession of their respective Revenue Departments have been allotted to private parties for non-forest activities.
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The Supreme Court, in a judgment, has directed Chief Secretaries of States and Administrators of Union Territories across the country to form Special Investigation Teams to examine if forest lands in the possession of their respective Revenue Departments have been allotted to private parties for non-forest activities.
A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai has directed the authorities to take back possession of such forest lands from private individuals and entities and hand them over to the forest departments.
“In case, it is found that taking back the possession of the land would not be in the larger public interest, the State Governments/Union Territories should recover the cost of the land from the persons/institutions to whom they were allotted and use the amount for the purpose of development of forests,” Chief Justice Gavai, who authored the verdict, directed.
The entire exercise has to be completed within a year.
“Chief Secretaries of all the States and the Administrators of all the Union Territories are directed to constitute Special Teams to ensure that all such transfers take place within a period of one year from today. Needless to state that hereinafter such land should be used only for the purpose of afforestation,” the apex court ordered.
Using of forest land for commercial purposes
The directions were issued while declaring as illegal the allotment of 11.89 hectares of reserve forest land at Kondhwa Budruk in Pune district of Maharashtra for agricultural purposes in 1998 and its sale to a builder the very next year.
Chief Justice Gavai said the case was a “classic example of how the nexus between politicians, bureaucrats and builders results in the conversion of precious forest land for commercial purposes…”
The apex court quashed the Environmental Clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to the builder in 2007 as also illegal. The court ordered the land, found to be in the possession of the State’s revenue department, to be transferred to the forest department.
“It has been noticed that a vast stretch of the land which is notified as ‘forest land’ is still in the possession of the Revenue Department. Such a situation creates many complexities as is evident in the present matter. The revenue department, despite resistance from the forest department, allotted the land to private individuals/institutions for non-forestry purposes. This, in turn, reduced the vital green cover,” Chief Justice Gavai wrote in the judgment.
The court said there was also a Central Empowered Committee report, placed on record through its amicus curiae, senior advocate K. Parameshwar, showing that “many forest lands have been allotted to private individuals/institutions for non-forestry purposes”.
This had been done despite a Supreme Court order of December 12, 1996, that “all on-going activity within any forest in any State throughout the country, without the prior approval of the Central Government, must be ceased immediately”. In his judgment, Chief Justice Gavai said, “Any such allotment after December 12, 1996 would not be sustainable in law.”
Published – May 18, 2025 09:26 pm IST