Karnataka Residence Minister Araga Jnanendra stated on Tuesday that he, together with Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, would talk about with the Union authorities the difficulty associated to the cancellation of allotment of 9,934.02 acres of de-notified forest land in Shivamogga district to the villagers displaced after the development of Linganamakki dam.
The assertion got here on a day when locals in Shivamogga district staged a protest towards the Karnataka authorities’s determination to cancel the allotment.
“I’ll go to Delhi together with the CM to debate the difficulty with the Union authorities,” Jnanendra stated after chairing a gathering in Bengaluru together with Sagar district legislator Harthalu Halappa.
The federal government had cancelled the allotment after social activist Gireesh Achar had approached the court docket stating that the forest land was allotted with out the permission of the Union authorities. He has additionally filed a grievance earlier than the southern zone of the Ministry of Surroundings, Forests and Local weather Change (MoEF&CC) towards former IAS officers Madan Gopal and T M Vijaya Bhaskar for de-notifying 9,934.02 acres of forest land in Shivamogga district between 2015-2017.
In his grievance filed on September 29, Achar stated that although the Forest Conservation Act makes it necessary for the state authorities to hunt the Union authorities’s approval earlier than de-notifying or changing forest areas, the identical didn’t occur on this case. “The land allotment was unlawful. The federal government should observe due strategy of regulation,” he stated.
Achar’s grievance (a duplicate of it has been shared with indianexpress.com) factors out that 56 de-notification orders had been issued on November 17, December 14 and December 19 in 2015; on July 19, September 28 and November 23 in 2016; and on February 23 in 2017 to de-notify the reserved forest/forest space measuring 9934.02 acres.
Gopal and Bhaskar issued the stated 56 de-notifications beneath Part 28 of Karnataka Forest Act, 1963, stated Veerendra Patil, an advocate representing Achar. “They contended that no permission was required from the Union authorities for issuing de-notifications. Nonetheless, the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, Part 2 clearly talks concerning the ‘restriction on the de-reservation of forest or use of forest land for non-forest functions’. No state authorities or different authority shall make any change besides with the prior approval of the central authorities,” Patil added.
Patil defined that the central authorities on Might 5, 1996, authorised the diversion of 14,848.83 hectares of forest land within the Sagar forest division in Shivamogga district to rehabilitate farmers who misplaced their land to the development of Linganamakki dam.
“The encroachments made earlier than 1978 had been regularised by the Union authorities. The Forest Conservation Act was enacted within the yr 1980 after which it was made necessary that any diversion of forest land would require the prior permission of the central authorities. So the de-notifications made by the previous IAS officers within the interval between 2015-2017 are unlawful and violate the Forest Conservation Act,” Patil added.
On October 14, throughout a listening to earlier than the Karnataka Excessive Court docket, Jawed Akhtar, further chief secretary (forest, ecology and surroundings) stated that on September 29 this yr, the 56 de-notifications orders which got by the state authorities with out the approval of the Union authorities had been withdrawn.
“The federal government has already initiated motion to seek out out as as to whether any non-forestry actions are allowed by the officers involved and the federal government has already issued communication dated 19.09.2022 to the principal chief conservator of forests (head of forest power) to investigate into the matter,” Akhtar advised the co