CHHATTISGARH'S FOREST

Source: The Indian Express

Context

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has objected to transferring thousands of hectares of land without following due process by Chhattisgarh from its Forest to the Revenue Department for setting up industries and for building the road, rail and other infrastructure.

Key Points

While the Chhattisgarh government has described these areas as non-forest land that was earlier given "by Mistake" to the Forest Department, the Environment Ministry has warned that the land in question is "undemarcated protected forests".
Which cannot be used for non-forest purposes without clearance under the Forest Conservation (FC) Act, 1980.

Forests in law

State Forest Departments have jurisdiction over two types of forests notified under the Indian Forest (IF) Act, 1927.

Reserve Forests (RF), Where no rights are allowed unless specified and
Protected Forests (PF), Where no rights are barred unless specified.

Certain forests, such as village or Nagar Palika forests are managed by state Revenue Departments.

Forest Conservation Act, 1980

The FC Act, 1980, applies to all kinds of forests, whether under the control of the Forest or the Revenue Department.
It requires statutory clearance before forests can be used for any non-forest purpose such as industry, mining or construction.
In 1976, forests were included in List III (Concurrent List) Under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.

Chhattisgarh case

The recorded forest area in Chhatisgarh covers 44.21 per cent of its geography.
The state government says it is constrained by the limited availability of land, particularly in the tribal regions for development works.

In May 2021, the state Revenue Department sought a field survey to identify non-forest land parcels smaller than 10 hectares with less than 200 trees per hectare that had been included by mistake in "Orange Areas" under the Forest Department.

This March, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel announced that over 300 sq km of the "Orange" area in the Bastar region had been handed over to the Revenue Department.

Orange and a grey area

Under the Zamindari system, villagers used local malguzari (livelihood concessions) for forest firewood, grazing, etc.
When zamindari was abolished in 1951, Malguzari forests came under the Revenue Department.
In 1958, the government of the undivided Madhya Pradesh notified all these areas as PFs under the Forest Department.
Through the 1960s, ground surveys and demarcations of these PFs continued either to form blocks of suitable patches to be declared as Reserve Forests or to denotify and return to the Revenue Department.
For this purpose, Madhya Pradesh amended the IF Act, 1927, in 1965 when forests figured in the State list to allow denotification of PFs.
The areas yet to be surveyed undermarcated PFs were marked in orange on the map.

Since 2003, a case has been pending in the Supreme Court on rationalising these orange areas that have remained a bone of contention between the two Departments.

Policy Jam

The transfer of PFs to the Revenue Department continued until 1976 when reports of illicit felling in Revenue areas prompted Madhya Pradesh to seek a fresh survey to shift quality forest patches back to the Forest Department.
But before this survey could be undertaken, the new government that came to power in the state in 1978 switched the focus to settling encroachments.
The FC Act came in 1980 and required central clearance for non-forest use of forest land.
This led to a situation where the rights of lakhs of villagers, including those settled by the government through pattas, remained restricted.

In 2020, a task force set up by Madhya Pradesh to resolve the deadlock recommended that Patta-holders should not be considered encroachers since they were given land by government officials and they should be settled after obtaining permission from the Government of India with the cut-off year of 1976.

After MP was Split

Carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, Chhattisgarh inherited its share of "Orange" areas.
Ranked second after Orissa in implementing the Forest Rights Act, of 2006, the state has settled over 26, 000 claims since 2019.
The logical next step, say, officials who declined to be quoted, was to find land for the economic development of the tribal belt.
Chhattisgarh did not seek central clearance to transfer over 300 sq km to Revenue, they claim because it did not have to.

In December 1996, the SC defined forest after its dictionary meaning irrespective of the status of the land it stands on.

It also defined forestland as any land thus notified on any government record irrespective of what stands on that land.

To meet this broad definition, In 1997Madhya Pradesh framed a practical yardstick for an area no smaller than 10 hectares with at least 200 trees per hectare to identify forests in Revenue areas for handing over to the Forest Department.
As the process continued until 2007 after Chhattisgarh had come into existence state officials claim that some non-forest areas also came under the Forest Department as part of 2,328 sq km added to the 9, 954 sq km original Orange Areas of the 1950s inherited from Madhya Pradesh.
These non-forest areas, they claim, are now being identified and returned to the Revenue.

Does this hold?

The nature of vegetation changes over time. After so many years, a visual survey cannot determine if a particular piece of land did not meet the definition of a forest at the time when it was brought under the Forest Department.

Once brought under the Forest Department, whether mistakenly or otherwise, an area gets the status of forestland as per the 1996 SC order and hence comes under the FC Act, 1980.

The other view is that Chhattisgarh, thanks to the 1965 amendment to the IF Act, can still denotify PFs unilaterally.

It may also vest management of any land with any department since the state owns all land within its boundaries.
But if the stated purpose is non-forest use building industries and infrastructure the state will anyway require central clearance under the FC Act, 1980.

Compensatory Afforestation

Clearance for non-forest use of forestland under the FC Act requires giving back twice the area of Compensatory Afforestation (CA) from Revenue to Forest.
That would defeat the very purpose of the state government's action.
Conversion of Forest to Revenue land has been exempted from CA under exceptional circumstances in the past.
For example, when enclaves were moved out of forests, the SC allowed those to be resettled at the edge of the forests, in the absence of suitable Revenue land, as revenue villages.
It will be a stretch, though, for such considerations to apply to thousands of hectares meant for industries.

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