NEW DELHI: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has notified the new Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Amendment Rules, 2025, or the Forest Conservation Amendment Rules (FCA). These new rules expand the scope of state governments to divert forest land for infrastructure projects. It further weakens the regulations regarding compensatory afforestation and vaguely includes public interest projects as projects of national importance.
The notification modifies the definition of forest land diversion, allowing state governments to grant initial 'working permission' for linear projects. This includes preliminary project activities such as roadworks (other than blacktopping and concretisation), laying railway tracks, and installing transmission lines.
Previously, state governments could mobilise resources only after receiving in-principle or Stage-I approval for a project.
The notification states, “working permission means permission granted to linear projects after in-principle or Stage-I approval to mobilise resources or to commence the preliminary project works other than black topping and concretisation of roads, laying of railway tracks, charging of transmission lines, etc. or as specified by the Central Government.”
In another significant change, the government has ambiguously included the emergent nature of projects related to public interests. In a notification issued in September 2024, the government obscured projects related to defence and national security on the public portal 'Parivesh.' Following this, additional projects may be exempt from public scrutiny under the guise of public interest.
The notification stated, "Provided that for projects related to defence, strategic and national importance, exceptional cases related to public interest or emergent nature, the user agency may be permitted to submit an application for prior approval through offline mode.”
Additionally, the government has amended the rules concerning Compensatory Afforestation (CA) land. Under the CA guidelines, afforested land that has been diverted in exchange for forest land need not be notified as “protected forest”, but only mutated in favour of the Forest Department
Experts argue that these new amended rules violate interim orders from the Supreme Court orders of Feb 3 and March 4, 2025 which stated, “We make it clear that until further orders, no steps will be taken by the Union of India or any of the States, which will lead to reduction of the forest land unless a compensatory land is provided either by the State Government or the Union of India for the purpose of afforestation."
The new rules continue to allow degraded Reserved forests to be used as Compensatory afforestation compliance violating the Supreme Court orders.
This latest FCA notification modifies some of the previous FCA rules from 2023 which aims to implement the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023.