Incomplete and vague information means deemed forests to lose “forest” status
Supreme Court. Photo: iStock As many as 27 states and Union Territories (UT) have furnished details about their records concerning forests, according to the interim judgment passed by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2024.
However, the information submitted is not uniform and helps little in understanding the status of Indian forests.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued an interim directive to the Centre to refer to its understanding of ‘forest’ as “broad and all-encompassing” in order to classify India’s forests as per the order given in the T N Godavarman judgement of December 1996.
The order came in the backdrop of a Public Interest Litigation — Ashok Kumar Sharma, IFS (Retd.) & Ors -Vs- Union of India & Ors — challenging the constitutionality of the Van Sanrakshan Evam Adhiniyam, 2023.
The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 was amended to Van Sanrakshan Evam Adhiniyam, 2023 by the Centre. This was done with an aim to bring clarity to a 28-year-old issue in defining ‘forest’ as per the Godavarman judgment.
In a landmark judgment case — T N Godavarman Thirumalpad v. Union of India (December 12, 1996) — the court ruled that ‘forest’ has to be understood in terms of its dictionary meaning, irrespective of ownership.
The Godavarman judgment had also included forest-like areas, un-classed forests and community forest lands, including non-notified forest in its ambit.
As per the order, the states and UTs were expected to form expert committees to identify forest areas within a month of the 1996 Godavarman order issued on December 12. The apex court, in its order in the Ashok Sharma case in February, had directed the central government to make the state expert committee (SEC) reports public by April 15.
However, the information uploaded on the government Parivesh website does not include forest records of seven states — Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Tripura.
Other states and UTs — Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal and Ladakh — do not mention any information about forest records.
Most of the information provided by the states reveal no details on the geographical locations of forest areas, including ‘un-classed’ or ‘deemed forest’ areas.
Prakriti Srivastava, Kerala’s former principal chief conservator of forests and one of the petitioners in the case, told Down To Earth that having no information on ‘un-classed’ or ‘deemed forest’ is concerning as with the new amendment, they stand to lose protection provided by the Godavarman judgement.
This is contrary to the Centre’s claims of having records. “ ‘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…” the joint parliamentary committee documents released in 2023 noted.
States and UTs such as Jharkhand, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Andaman and Nicobar islands, Bihar as well as Dadra and Nagar Haveli have given generic figures and there is no data on ‘un-classed forests’.
“The state, forest and other government departments are likely to have information on notified forests even without the expert committee reports. The entire exercise directed by the Supreme Court was to identify forests as per the Godavarman order of 1996 and bring them under protection. But the data on un-classed forests is not comprehensively provided or present in any other domain including RTIs that I filed in January 2023 as directed by the Godavarman judgement in 1996 as well as the LaFarge judgement. Therefore, they stand unprotected and lost,” she said.
The Supreme Court, in its 2011 LaFarge judgment, had demand detailed information on location of forests with geo-referencing and clear demarcation.
As per the Forest Survey of India, the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) states that 0.167 million sq of forest areas lie outside notified forests. But as the records do not detail the geographical locations of these forest areas, it becomes difficult to identify them. Hence, they could be lost.
Srivastava said, “A closer look into the information shows there are no geographical locations detailed for any forests. This is a very serious issue for un-classed forest identification as these will not be getting protection under the new amended Act and will be lost very soon, if not already gone.”
She said the SEC reports put online by MoEFCC have not identified unclassed forests. The ministry has misguided the JPC that these reports identify all forests which will be accorded protection by the Adhiniyam.
However, these reports prove that unclassed forests are not identifable and therefore it is not known as to how much area has already been lost to diversions and encroachments.
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