With amended act kicking in, Odisha has no ‘deemed forest’

Subject :Environment

Section: Environment Law

Context:

The Odisha government has sent a letter to district officials underlining that industry requests to divert forest land for non-forestry purposes now ought to conform with the amended Forest Act and that ‘deemed forests’ as a category would cease to exist.

Details:

Deemed forest is forest land that hasn’t been recorded as such by the Centre or States. The 1996 Godavarman verdict by the Supreme Court enjoined States to bring in such unrecorded land that conformed to the ‘dictionary’ meaning of forest.
Nearly half of Odisha’s forest land was ‘deemed forest’, before the amended act came into existence.
The amended Act clearly specifies and defines forest. The concept of deemed forest is now removed.
Protection under the Forest Act means that land cannot be diverted without the consent of the Centre as well as gram panchayats in the regions concerned.
It also puts the onus on those diverting land to grow trees on an equivalent plot of land twice the razed area, along with a significant monetary penalty, thus acting as a deterrent to deforestation.
The Forest Act, 1980, now renamed as the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam — translated as Forest Conservation and Augmentation — only accorded protection to forest that is notified so in government and revenue records on or after 1980.
In 1996, the Supreme Court expanded the remit of the Act to areas that weren’t notified as forest but conformed to the “dictionary” definition of forests.
If notified forest land was legally diverted between 1980 and 1996, for non-forest use, the Forest Conservation Act would not apply.

Deemed forests in Odisha:

The Odisha government, since 1996, had with the help of expert committees at the district level identified nearly 66 lakh acres as ‘deemed forest’ but many of them weren’t officially notified as such in government records.
As per the new amendment there will be no check on forest diversion. It will be easier to divert forest land. As ‘deemed forest’ is not considered the ‘forest’ under the new amendment.
The latest Forest Survey of India records Odisha as having 52,156 square km (approx. 130 lakh acres) of forest coverage, which is 33.50% of the State’s geographical area, as compared to 21.71% of forest cover at the national level.