Centre reveals forest records after 28 years; seven states miss deadline

Subject: Environment

Section: Env law and body

Context:

As many as 27 states and Union Territories (UT) have furnished details about their records concerning forests, according to the interim judgment passed by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2024.

More on news:

The Supreme Court issued an interim directive to the Centre to refer to its understanding of ‘forest’ as “broad and all-encompassing” in order to classify India’s forests as per the order given in the T N Godavarman judgment of December 1996.
The order came in the backdrop of a Public Interest Litigation Ashok Kumar Sharma, IFS (Retd.) & Ors -Vs- Union of India & Ors ,challenging the constitutionality of the Van Sanrakshan Evam Adhiniyam, 2023.
The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 was amended to Van Sanrakshan Evam Adhiniyam, 2023 by the Centre.
This was done with an aim to bring clarity to a 28-year-old issue in defining ‘forest’ as per the Godavarman judgment.
As per the Forest Survey of India, the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) states that 0.167 million sq of forest areas lie outside notified forests.

Key findings:

The information uploaded on the government Parivesh website does not include forest records of seven states — Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Tripura.
Other states and UTs — Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal and Ladakh — do not mention any information about forest records.
States and UTs such as Jharkhand, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Andaman and Nicobar islands, Bihar as well as Dadra and Nagar Haveli have given generic figures and there is no data on ‘unclassed forests’.

About T N Godavarman Thirumalpad:

In a landmark judgment case — T N Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India (December 12, 1996) — the court ruled that ‘forest’ has to be understood in terms of its dictionary meaning, irrespective of ownership.
The Godavarman judgment had also included forest-like areas, unclassed forests and community forest lands, including non-notified forest in its ambit.
The states and UTs were expected to form expert committees to identify forest areas within a month of the 1996 Godavarman order issued on December 12.