28 years on, Haryana, West Bengal yet to form panels on ‘deemed’ forests

Aksheev Thakur

New Delhi, May 9

In compliance with a February 19 Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has uploaded various State Expert Committee (SEC) reports on its website. However, it is learnt that states/UTs like Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Puducherry, Lakshadweep, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have not yet constituted the SECs which were to be set up in pursuance of the 1996 Supreme Court order, popularly known as the Godavarman judgment.

About the areas

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The ‘deemed’ forests are areas that have characteristics of forests as per the dictionary meaning, irrespective of their notification, recognition or ownership status.

These panels were to be tasked with identifying ‘deemed’ forests which means forests as per the dictionary meaning, irrespective of their notification, recognition or ownership status. The reports of the expert committees were, however, never made public until the apex court ordered the Union Environment Ministry to do so in February.

Claiming that “no order was available” from the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir to constitute an SEC, Ladakh told the ministry that it had constituted a panel now. Jammu and Kashmir also said it had set up a committee.

No state/UT has specified the geographical locations of forests. A few states have also come up with data which is not in tandem with the Forest Survey of India (FSI) figures.

Gujarat’s SEC report says its ‘deemed’ forests cover 192.24 sq km while the FSI has reported a significantly higher extent of 4,577 sq km. While the SEC report of Assam says the extent of ‘deemed’ forest was 5,893.99 sq km, the FSI put it at 8,532 sq km.

In Karnataka, the government has filed an affidavit in the SC fixing the total ‘deemed’ forest area in the state at 3.3 lakh hectares, 6.64 lakh hectares less than the figure arrived 20 years ago. With a huge mismatch in the data, the state has been accused of “helping” encroachers.

Under the Forest Conservation Act, development projects in forest areas by a user agency need Centre’s approval. However, the Act does not recognise ‘deemed’ forests. Former Indian Forest Service officer BK Singh said, “By keeping the areas out of the ‘deemed’ forest list, politicians wanted to help encroachers. The government can use such land for developmental projects, without having to seek Centre’s clearance.”