In SC, state defends dropping of private forest survey numbers

Panaji: Amid the contrroversy surrounding private forests in the state, the forest department, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, has defended its decision to drop certain survey numbers that were included in the category of private forests by the Araujo and Thomas committees.
The department said that these two committees did the survey and demarcation of private forests on an ocular basis (based on what was seen) and without any scientific methodology.
In an order in Sep 2023, the NGT accepted a report by the department's review committee (RC)-II dropping certain survey numbers that were previously included, and asked the RC-II to complete its work of finalising the remaining private forest areas in Goa within a year.
Goa Foundation challenged this order, and urged the top court to set it aside. The organisation stated in its petition that all survey numbers that form part of the earlier exercises, and which were identified, surveyed, and demarcated as final, cannot be excluded.
“The decision to exclude these survey numbers is mala fide and beyond the terms of reference of the RC-II, and ought to have been quashed,” said Goa Foundation in its appeal
However, deputy conservator of forests Nandakumar Parab filed an affidavit stating that the NGT’s order doesn’t suffer from any infirmity, as it has rightly arrived at the finding by holding that RC-II hasn’t exceeded its mandate by undertaking a review of the forest areas finalised by the two committees. He also said that the methodology adopted by the RC-II is a scientific one, and that the demarcation of the private forest area done/being done by it has been found to be appropriate.
The V T Thomas and F X Araujo committees for North Goa and South Goa respectively were formed in 2012 and were tasked with identifying the balance areas of private forest that had not been covered in two earlier committees called the Sawant and Karapurkar committees. They were told to locate private forests on the ground individually and judge them in conformation with crop composition — 75% or more of the trees had to be of forestry species, and the canopy density should be 0.4% or more.
The department said that the Thomas and Araujo committees have themselves said in their reports that they did the exercise ocularly.
“As there is substantial curtailment of rights involved due to the identification of any land as private forest wherein the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, is applicable, it is not fair to declare any area as private forest merely on an ocular basis,” said the department. “Therefore, the RC-II decided to review ocularly-finalised areas — all those areas for which plans were prepared as well as excluded on an ocular basis by the Thomas and Araujo committees — following the same methodology through which other areas are reviewed, as we can’t discriminate between finalised survey numbers, whether excluded or for which plans were prepared ocularly.”
The department further submitted that the present review committee is reviewing the areas provisionally identified as private forest by the Thomas and Araujo committees in a transparent and fair manner, following a scientific methodology and principles of natural justice. “The map of survey numbers fulfilling the private forest criteria is being prepared and reported. Hence, it is denied that the work of the RC-II is violative of the orders of the Supreme Court dated Dec 12, 1996, in the Godavarman case,” the department said.
“It is humbly prayed that this court may be pleased to decline from interfering with the judgment passed by the NGT and dismiss the civil appeal in limine with costs,” it said.