Centre has no details of panel report on deemed forests: RTI
A batch of petitions were filed by a group of retired IFS officers and former bureaucrats against several contentious provisions of the amended Act
New Delhi:
The Union environment ministry does not have details of the state expert committee reports which identified so-called deemed forests in every state following Supreme Court’s 1996 order in TN Godavarman Vs Union of India matter, according to information received under a right to information or RTI application.
The Supreme Court, in that December 12, 1996 order directed that each state government constitute an expert committee within a month to identify areas which are “forests” as per the dictionary meaning, irrespective of whether they are so notified, recognised or classified under any law, and irrespective of their ownership.
Retired IFS officer, former principal chief conservator of forests (PCCF) Kerala, Prakriti Srivastava in January this year sought the names of all states that have submitted state expert committees as directed by SC in 1996; and copies of all state expert committee reports prepared as per direction of SC. In response to the query, the environment ministry, on January 25 said: “The requisite information is not available in the Forest Conservation division of the Ministry. Accordingly, a copy of the application is hereby transferred under section 6 (3) of the RTI Act of 2005 to the PIO, O/o PCCF all states/UTs to furnish information directly to the applicant, as available with them.”
Srivastava filed another RTI query on January 20 which sought the latest updated GIS maps for all states and UTs containing the district wise details of the location and boundary of each plot of land that may be defined as forest for the purpose of forest conservation act 1980; whether a GIS based decision support database was created as directed by the SC, and if so, a link to that; and all geo-referenced district forest maps with details of areas identified as forests in compliance with the 1996 order. However, the weblink did not provide geo-referenced maps of these forests according to Srivastava.
To this, the ministry, in a response dated February 1 stated that it “in collaboration with the Forest Survey of India has prepared a GIS based decision support system wherein forest layers among other layers such as hydrological layers; wildlife corridors; landscape integrity etc have been embedded. The database is available in the public domain and can be accessed at https://parivesh.nic.in/kya/#/. Further as per requisite information in State/UTs specific, therefore as regards to the revenue forest areas or other forest like areas, not covered within recorded forest areas of the FSI may be obtained from state government/UTs.”
Interestingly, in the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Forest Conservation Amendment bill 2023 submitted in Lok Sabha in July last year, the ministry stated that “deemed forests as identified by expert committees of the states, have been taken on record and hence the provision of the Act will be applicable in such lands also...” This gave the impression to several environmental groups that the data was already available with the union environment ministry. The FC Amendment Act or the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam 2023 was passed last July. One of the most contentious provisions of the Act is that it removes the protection that unrecorded deemed forests thus far enjoyed under the 1996 judgement.
A batch of petitions were filed by a group of retired IFS officers and former bureaucrats against several contentious provisions of the amended Act.
The SC on Monday issued an interim order that has effectively suspended what experts and activists said were dilution of environmental protections for forests in a law enacted by the government last year. The court ordered that states and Union territories need to go by the dictionary definition of the word forest to determine whether any work can be approved on any land, asked the Union government to seek details about what lands have been identified as forests in the lexical sense (in keeping with a 1996 ruling), and that no zoos or safaris can be set up in such areas unless the court’s approval has been secured.
“All states and UTs must comply with the directions by forwarding the reports of the expert committees by March 31, 2024. These records shall be maintained by the MoEFF and shall be duly digitised and made available on the official website by April 15, 2024,” the bench said.
It further stated that the expert committees which are constituted as per rule 16 of the 2023 FC Rules shall duly include data of the 1996 SEC reports by the previous expert committees formed as per the Godavarman judgment. The court added that the expert committees formed as per the 2023 rules will be at liberty to expand the ambit of forest lands which are worthy of protection.
“This is an amazing order because SC has said that all state expert committee reports on forests identifying all categories of forests including unclassed forests as per the Godavarman judgement are to be compiled by the MoEFCC within two weeks and georeferenced also as per the 2011 Lafarge order in the 202/ 96 Godavarman case. These geo-referenced maps of all forests have to be put in the public domain by 15th April 2024. When I sought these reports under RTI, I was told that the information is not available with the Ministry. This is shocking when the Ministry has stated before the Joint Parliamentary Committee that the SEC reports have been taken on record and the amended Act will be applicable to the land also. It is really horrifying that the Ministry has made such false assurances which have resulted in changing the conservation regime of the country through the amended Act without even examining the State Expert Committee reports! Considering the few poor quality SEC reports that have been seen by us, it is to be seen what the next steps of the Ministry will be in pursuance to the SC order of today,” Prakriti Srivastava, retired IFS officer said on Monday following SC’s interim order.
The ministry did not respond to HT’s queries on the court’s Monday order.
“The governance of forests in India needs to rely on both cooperative federalism and decentralisation as essential pillars to address questions of definitions, ownership and decision making. Forests are in the concurrent list of the Constitution and therefore making both central and state governments responsible for its conservation and use. Drawing upon this distribution of powers, the committees set up to identify deemed forests fulfil the mandate of a central law, we interpreted by the courts and designed to regulate diversion of land for non forest use by state governments. Therefore, the responsibility of maintaining data related to what lands are deemed to be forests for the applicability if the Forest Conservation Act was and continues to be one of both the centre and the state,” said Kanchi Kohli, independent legal and policy research.
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