BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court quashed the orders passed by the forest authorities declaring around 19 acres 35 guntas of land belonging to six persons as forest land at Mylasandra village of Kengeri Hobli in Bengaluru South taluk.
Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the order, while allowing the petition filed by D Muniraju and five others, who are brothers, and owners of land Sy.Nos. 60 to 63 in Mylasandra.
The petitioners had challenged the order passed by the Chief Conservator of Forests in 2014, affirming the order passed by the Assistant Conservator of Forests in 2008, declaring the lands in question belonging to the petitioners to be forest land.
“No doubt the forest land abuts the lands of the petitioners. But that does not mean that the boundary of the forest land can stretch into private land declaring the entire extent of land holding of the petitioners to be forest land,” the court noted.
"Finding the orders themselves to be erroneous and that erroneousness getting vindicated by the report of the survey, the unmistakable inference would be quashment of the orders that stare at these petitioners declaring the lands to be forest lands," the court added
During the hearing of the petition, the high court ordered for survey, which revealed that the land in question is not encroached on by the petitioners. However, the state government disputed the survey.