Odisha puts order on deemed forests on hold
The Odisha government has decided to halt its earlier directive on forest diversion proposals, pending detailed rules and guidelines from the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change. The move has been criticized for potentially impacting ecologically important deemed forests in the region. The new law on forest conservation exempts unrecorded deemed forests from its provisions, which has raised concerns about the protection of significant natural features.
New Delhi:
The Odisha government has put on hold its earlier direction to all district collectors to ensure that forest diversion proposals should follow the provisions of the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, 2023.
“In continuation to the DO Letter no. 17217 dated August 11..., I am directed to inform that the contents of the above referred letter is to be followed only after receipt of detailed rules and guidelines from the ministry of environment, forests and climate change, Government of India,” said the letter dated August 14 and issued by additional secretary Deben Kumar Pradhan.
The latest latter is being circulated among environmental groups. Pradhan could not be contacted on his official number on Tuesday.
An earlier letter sent to district collectors on August 11 by Satyabrata Sahu, additional chief secretary, stated that the amended forest conservation law clearly defined and specified forests. “The concept of deemed forest is now removed,” the letter said, a copy of which was seen by HT.
All forest land diverted for non-forest purposes by any authority before December 12, 1996, will not attract the provisions of the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, 2023, it had said. Any survey or exploration projects will also not be treated as non-forestry activities, the letter added.
There was widespread criticism of the directions because such a move would impact ecologically important deemed forests in Odisha. Some forests in Niyamgiri hills, home to the Dongria Kondh tribe, also come under this category. The case of Niyamgiri is significant because a Supreme Court order in 2013 asked the forest dwellers to decide if mining in the hills would affect their religious and cultural rights.
The Odisha government’s directions on deemed forests deviate from the observations in the report of the joint parliamentary committee that reviewed the draft legislation that has since been approved in Parliament and received the assent of President Droupadi Murmu, experts said. The law will come into effect once the central government notifies it in the gazette.
Deemed forests identified by expert committees of states have been taken on record and provisions of the act will apply to all such lands, the union environment ministry had said, responding to concerns on exempting deemed forests in the report of the parliamentary panel.
“The ministry should convey the clarification it gave to the joint committee on recognition of deemed forests. It should also be clarified in the rules and guidelines framed for the implementation of the Act,” said retired Lt Col Sarvadaman Oberoi, a Gurugram- based environmental activist. “The ministry had informed the joint committee that it will continue to recognise deemed forests and provisions of the Act would apply to them.”
“This is not just a letter, it’s a precedent, recipe for disaster to be followed soon by other States if not challenged it’s legality & validity immediately. 1st, ‘deemed forests’ already identified as forest in records ‘held’ by any department or administration should be considered as ‘forest’ even by the new amendment...2nd, it’s uncertain if the amendment is yet to be considered to be law as date of enforcement is yet to be notified. Then the letter will be invalid,” Debadityo Sinha, lead, climate and ecosystems at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, tweeted on Tuesday.
One of the contentious provisions of the new law is that it exempts unrecorded deemed forests from the modified law on forest conservation.
Forest governance in India was majorly influenced by a Supreme Court judgement in 1996 in TN Godavarman vs Union of India, in which the court interpreted the meaning of forest as its dictionary definition, expanding the purview of the forest conservation law. The December 1996 judgement said forests will not only include forest as understood in the dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in official records, irrespective of ownership. This brought hope to recognize ecologically rich land that were not recorded as forests in government records but still needed to be protected because they were significant natural features.
The Centre, however, said this created confusion on what would encompass forests and the amendment narrows down the definition, leaving vast tracts of unclassified forests vulnerable to destruction.