Asks district collectors to revoke permissions, inform civic body to cancel rights on such land

In a bid to preempt any more construction on private forest land, the state government has ordered all non-agriculture permissions issued on such lands to be revoked.

The state Revenue and Forest Department issued orders last week to all district collectors asking them to not only revoke non-agriculture (NA) permissions granted on private forest lands, but also inform the concerned civic body to cancel any building permissions issued on such land. NA permission is the basic permission that allows developers to exploit such a land commercially for residential, commercial or industrial purpose. The move is bound to deal a severe blow to several powerful landowners which includes some of the state’s political heavyweights also.

More than three decades ago, about 2.58 lakh hectare of forest land was acquired by the state under the Private Forest (Acquisition) Act 1975. Of this, 87,000-odd hectares of private forest land was soon restored to the land owners with the rider that non-forest activities would not be permitted.

However, the land records failed to reflect the status of these tracts of lands as private forest land as the Revenue Department never made the entries. As a result, the respective district collectors issued NA permissions for carrying out construction on thousands of hectares of private forest land.

“We have issued the orders after the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) brought to our notice that district collectors are still issuing these permissions,” said joint revenue secretary Ramakant Asmar, whose department issued the circular on March 18.

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