Drone survey of PLPA area begins

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Chandigarh, October 26

The state Forest Department has started using drones to digitally identify the areas marked under Sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA), 1900.

Over 1.32 lakh hectares of land spread across six districts and covering 498 villages is closed under the PLPA.

The exercise has been started after the Supreme Court, in its judgement pertaining to Haryana, observed that all land covered by the special orders issued under Section 4 of the PLPA should be treated as forests and that the provisions of Forest Conservation Act, 1980, will apply to these.

In Punjab, the maximum areas marked under PLPA was in Hoshiarpur villages (41,067 hectares), followed by Ropar (26,338 hectares), Nawanshahar (25,607 hectares), Dasuya (16,216 hectares), Mohali (14,210 hectares) and Pathankot (8,599 hectares).

There were cases in Mohali and other places, where the affected landowners had been contesting that the marking of land under the PLPA did not mean that it was covered under the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act.