An interim order of the Supreme Court stopped the partial felling of the central forest conservation law through a clutch of recent amendments. Called the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Act, 2023, the core of the amendments had allowed diversion of ‘forest’ or use of ‘forest land’ for certain non-forest purposes. The court thankfully arrested the possible harm from the amendments.
The government, through the amendments, tried to delete a large swathe of ‘deemed forest’ and ‘forest land’ that were not recorded as forests in the government’s files but recognised by the Supreme Court in its landmark order in the TN Godavarman case of 1996. (see box)
The Godavarman order came in the context of the lack of clarity over definition of the terms ‘forest’ and ‘forest land’ in Section 2 of the then Forest Conservation Act, 1980. The court ruled that the dictionary definition of forest must come into play irrespective of ownership. In effect, it reiterated the position it took on the 1996 order.
In its recent interim order, the SC reinstated some of the earlier provisions meant to conserve ‘deemed forests’ that were formally not recorded as forest in the state’s records. Besides, the court also directed not to allow setting up of zoos or safaris on forest land without its permission. It directed the Centre to issue a circular notifying all the state governments and Union Territories about the aforesaid fiat.
The court came down heavily on the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change(MoEFCC), after learning that the government had violated the assurances given to the court. “On November 30 last year, the MoEFCC assured the court that no precipitative action would be taken but the government had notified rules and guidelines one day prior to that order,” said Kaushik Choudhury, a lawyer arguing the case.
Amendments to the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 had drawn heavy criticism from different quarters, including members of a Joint Parliamentary Committee. They had objected to the dilution of many conservation provisions, including that on protection of deemed forests. The amendments had given abundant powers to the state governments to notify the rules and guidelines without any prior permission from the Centre for clearing any unclassified or deemed forest.
Some retired Indian forest officials, environmentalists and activists feared the amendments would spell disaster on the country’s forest resources as also on the livelihood of millions of people dependent on those resources.
They approached the court against the amendments, demanding an interim stay of the guidelines and the rules issued by MoEFCC; reinstatement of the Godavarman case order which was being violated through the amendments; and the examination of the State Expert Committee (SEC) reports on documentation of deemed forest land prepared after the 1996 judgement. The court in its latest order directed the concerned ministry to upload all SECs reports on the MoEFCC website by 15 April 2024.
State Expert Committee report
After the landmark 1996 verdict, all states were asked to constitute SECs and document all kinds of forests, including unclassified ones irrespective of ownership. Experts say very few states have complied so far. In response to a Right To Information request for accessing SEC reports, the Union government replied that it had no such document.
“It’s 27 years since the Godavarman order and we still don’t know if all states have prepared the reports or their content and quality,” said Prerna Singh Bindra, environmentalist and one of the petitioners to the case.
“The one report we had was from Kerala. Later Assam filed its state report. The reports are mostly generic, without geographic locations, boundaries and extent. They are poor, shoddy, sloppy jobs; lacking ground truthing and cadastral surveys,” she further said.
Operative part of the Godavarman order
…The word “forest”: must be understood according to its dictionary meaning. This description covers all statutorily recognised forests, whether designated as reserved, protected or otherwise for the purpose of Section 2(i) of the Forest Conservation Act. The term “forest land”, occurring in Section 2, will not only include “forest” as understood in the dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the Government record irrespective of the ownership.