Chunk of India’s forests ‘missing’ after 27-year-delay to file reports | Analysis

MoEFCC uploads SEC reports on unclassed forests following Supreme Court order, revealing lack of diligence and, potentially, losing track of a big chunk of forest land in India.

In compliance with a February 19, 2024, Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded the State Expert Committee (SEC) reports on its website earlier in April. This interim order was in response to a public interest litigation challenging the constitutionality of the Forest (Conservation) Act Amendment (FCAA) 2023. A key concern in the petition was that the status of unclassed forests, which were to be identified by the state SEC reports, wasn’t known or if they had been identified at all.

With the enactment of FCAA, these unclassed forests — which have legal protection under the landmark case T.N. Godavarman Thirumalpad (1996) — would lose this protection, leading to their inevitable diversion. The SEC reports were to be prepared in pursuance of the order, which specified that ‘forests’ as per their dictionary meaning and all categories of forests irrespective of ownership and notification status would be included under the ambit of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980. As a result, unclassed forests, a.k.a. deemed forests, would also require the Central government approval in case a project proponent sought to divert that land for non-forest use, after multiple other layers scrutiny.

Unclassed or deemed forests may belong to forests, revenue, railways and other government entities, community forests or those under private ownership, but are not notified. SECs were to identify all such forests across the country through available records i.e. Forest Working Plans, Revenue land records, etc., and by physical identification of any land patch having the nature of forests as per dictionary meaning regardless of its ownership.

The status of the reports were unknown from 1996 until they shot back into prominence when the MoEFCC told a Joint Parliamentary Committee — appointed to examine the proposed law — that the SECs had identified unclassed forests that had been taken on record.

This was in response to stinging criticism that the proposed law undermined the Godavarman judgement and would exclude all unclassed forest land from its purview. The MoEFCC had assured the Committee that “the amended Act would be applicable” to the SEC-identified unclassed forests, stressing that the proposed amendment “was in line with the Godavarman judgement”.

But in response to an RTI application filed on January 17, 2024, the MoEFCC said it “did not have the requisite reports”. How then had it taken the reports “on record” and assured a parliamentary committee that the amended Act would protect deemed forests identified by the SECs? The Ministry had effectively proposed to protect forests but it didn’t know where they were.

Following the February order, the MoEFCC uploaded the SEC reports on its website, but nothing has changed. In fact, the reports reveal a grim picture: no state has provided verifiable data on the identification, status, and location of unclassed Forests in its remit.