In compliance with the Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has uploaded the reports of various State Expert Committees (SEC) on its website. This interim order was in response to a PIL in which the Forest ( The constitutionality of the Forest Conservation (Conservation) Act Amendment (FCAA), 2023 was challenged. The petition filed was based on questions relating to non-awareness of the status of unclassified forests or confirmation of their identity, which were to be identified by State SEC reports .
Facts known by SEC report
Key points
- No State provided verifiable data on the identity, status and location of unclassified forests.
- Seven states and union territories (Goa, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal) did not even constitute SEC.
- Only 17 out of 23 states submitted reports as per the directions of the High Court.
- Most states rely on existing data from forest and revenue departments without conducting field level or physical surveys and most have not demarcated unclassified forest land.
- There is lack of clarity on the geographical location and classification of these forests.
- Significant discrepancies were made in the reports of many states with Forest Survey of India (FSI) data.
- For example, Gujarat’s State Expert Committee report mentioned unclassified forests of 192.24 sq km, while FSI estimated 4,577 sq km. informed of.
- Similarly, in Assam, where the extent of unclassified forest area in the SEC report is 5,893.99 sq. km. has been reported, whereas FSI has reported 8,532 sq km.
- Only nine states provided information on unclassified forests, while other states did not share clear data on different types of forest areas.
- Some states have given details of destroyed, cleared and encroached forests, but the details vary in different reports.
- There is a lack of clarity regarding extraction of data from available records and geographical location of forests, and no topo sheet identification map (a map showing natural and man-made features of an area) is available.
Result
- The rapid and incomplete nature of SEC reports is likely to lead to large-scale destruction of unclassified forests.
- For example, Kerala’s SEC did not include the Pallivasal Unreserved Area, an ecologically sensitive area in Munnar, which was devastated by the 2018 floods.
- The report also failed to mention Chinnakanal, a famous elephant corridor of Munnar, which has now been decimated due to over-commercial tourism, leading to several instances of human-elephant conflict.
- Failure to comprehensively identify and protect these forests undermines the Godavarman Judgment of 1996 and the Indian Forest Policy’s target of achieving 33.3% forest cover in the plains and 66.6% in the hills.
- A 2021 report by the Forest Survey of India shows 21% forest cover in the country overall (which is disputed by experts) and 40% in the hills. In the last cycle of review of the survey, about 900 sq. km. Has suffered a loss.
Unclassified forest
- Unclassified forests, also known as ‘deemed forests’, enjoy legal protection under the landmark case of T.N. Godavarman Thirumulkapada vs. Union of India and others, (1996).
- These include different types of land, including forest, revenue, railway, government institutions, community forests or privately owned land.
- Despite their diverse ownership, these forests are not officially notified under the Indian Forest Act, however, forest type vegetation is present in the area.
- State Expert Committees (SECs) were entrusted with the task of determining unclassified forests across the country.
- This assessment involved examining available data such as forest action plans and revenue land records, as well as physical identification of land areas having forest-like characteristics.
- The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, which came into force in December, 2023, introduced significant changes in the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (FCA).