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Despite a Supreme Court order prohibiting the reduction of forest land without safeguards, the Indian government has given the nod for clearing over 8,500 hectares of forests in just half a year, government records show. The figures have come under scrutiny following a petition filed in the Supreme Court challenging the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 over misuse of compensatory afforestation (CA).
The petitioners flagged that the central government was permitting CA in notified degraded forests, revenue forests and unclassed forests — categories that have legal protection under earlier orders by the apex court.
In the first six months of 2025, 8,518.23 hectares of forest land — equivalent to over four times the size of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport or nearly 12,000 football fields — has been given the nod for clearing for various projects, the petitioners claimed.
An analysis of public records from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) shows that a total of 8,518.23 hectares of forest land was approved for diversion between February 2025 and June 16, 2025 by three statutory bodies: The Regional Empowered Committees (REC), the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) and the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).
MoEF&CC documents show that till June 2025, 348.96 hectares were okayed for clearance by RECs, 4,711.91 hectares by the FAC and 3,457.37 hectares of protected areas like national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and eco-sensitive zones were okayed for diversions by the NBWL.
The RECs, which operate across 10 regional offices under the MoEF&CC, are empowered to approve proposals involving forest diversions up to 40 hectares and to recommend larger projects to the FAC. In 10 REC meetings this year, 394.71 hectares were proposed for diversion; of this, 348.96 hectares were approved. Within these, 190.48 hectares were approved with CA in degraded forests and 141.39 hectares with CA in unclassed forests.
In three FAC meetings held in 2025, 67 proposals were submitted seeking diversion of 8,373.61 hectares of forest land. The committee approved 4,711.90 hectares across 44 projects. Another 22 proposals were deferred and one was rejected.
Under the ambit of the FAC, forest clearances apply to all forest areas, including reserved forests, protected forests and any forest covered by the 1996 Godavarman Supreme Court order, which encompasses unclassed, revenue, deemed and unrecorded forests. Of the projects approved, 1,700.21 hectares were granted clearance with CA in degraded forests and 1,592.78 hectares with CA in unclassed forests.
The NBWL, which assesses projects in ecologically sensitive and protected areas, approved 3,457.37 hectares of forest diversion in its recent meetings, according to the minutes.
Most of the clearances in 2025 relate to stone and granite quarrying, road construction and widening, irrigation works, railway and transmission infrastructure and installations such as cellphone towers and defence facilities. Defence projects alone received clearances for 329 hectares of forest land, primarily in Leh-Ladakh and Sikkim.
The central government approved the diversion of 28,880 hectares of forest land in 2023-24 and 17,381 hectares in 2022-23.
According to the India State of Forest Report 2023, while 16,630 sq km of forest cover was added between 2013 and 2023, 97 per cent of this was outside recorded forest areas, on private or non-forest land. In the same decade, 92,989 sq km of forest was degraded, the report found.
Much of the recorded increase was attributed to commercial plantations like rubber and agro-forestry species such as mango and coconut, which have limited ecological value compared to natural forests.
Responding to a parliamentary query, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on March 24, 2025 said between 2014-15 and 2023-24, a total of 173,396.87 hectares of forest land had been diverted for non-forest use under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA) 1980 and the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam.
The petition before the Supreme Court raises concerns that CA is being permitted on legally protected forest categories, such as degraded and unclassed forests, in violation of both the 1996 Godavarman order and the Court’s own directive in Ashok Kumar Sharma vs Union of India dated February 3, 2025.
The 1996 Godavarman judgment had clarified the definition of “forest” to include areas recorded as forests in government records, regardless of ownership, as well as those meeting the dictionary meaning of the term.
However, the 2023 amendment to the FCA effectively exempts unrecorded and deemed forests from the law’s protective ambit. It also regularises all diversions of forest land between 1980 and 1996 that were carried out by government or quasi-government agencies without following the due process under the original Act.
A retired forest officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the amendment as “untenable”, warning that it dilutes key protections and promotes misleading narratives about afforestation.
“The government often tries to portray CA as a positive initiative to increase green cover,” the official said. “But such plantations are raised after diverting natural forests and use funds from project proponents, not existing government schemes like Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) or the Green India Mission.”
“There is no shortage of funds. The government has not even been able to fully utilise the money already available through CAMPA and other schemes. There is no need to accept money from developers and allow forest loss in exchange for ecologically inferior plantations,” the former official stated.
The petition underlined this concern: “The use of forest land for compensatory afforestation will cause destruction twice over: First, by diverting notified forest land for non-forest purposes through the forest clearance process under the FC Act and second, by degrading notified or unrecorded forest areas for plantations, which have poor ecological value in comparison to biodiverse forests.”
The underlying purpose of CA is to prevent a net loss of forest cover by converting and notifying equivalent non-forest land as forest. This goal is vital to India’s stated objective under the National Forest Policy: Achieving 33.33 per cent forest cover in the plains and 66.6 per cent in the hills.
However, the petition argues that current practices are undermining that aim. Despite the Supreme Court’s categorical directive on February 3, 2025 that no steps should be taken by the Centre or states to reduce forest land without first identifying compensatory land, “compensatory afforestation is being permitted on forest land,” the petitioners alleged.
