They have also demanded dissolution of the committee as it allegedly used Google Maps, and did not carry out inspections in the village.
The villagers have claimed that the committee kept the property owners in the dark and identified several lakh square meters of land in Sancoale as private forest, even though the same land has been categorized as C-1 and S-2 zones in the Outline Development Plan 2011 prepared by the Mormugao Planning and Development Authority.
The villagers were reacting to an inspection carried out by forest officials in the presence of the Land Survey Department and the Expert Committee to identify private forests in Goa on Wednesday.
The survey was initiated following a Supreme Court order to identify and demarcate the forest areas and degraded forest areas. Following the order, the Goa government constituted an Expert Committee to identify the private forest on private and revenue land in the State. Accordingly, the EC recently demarcated several lakh square meters of land in Sancoale as private forest.
Addressing newsmen after the inspection, Sancoale Sarpanch Ramakant Borkar said, “This is an injustice to all property owners from Sancoale; despite fixed criteria to identify private forests, the EC and forest officials demarcated C-1 and S-2 zones as private forest only to target landlords for some political reason.”
As per their own criteria, land can be demarcated as private forest if 75 percent of trees are forestry species and the canopy density is not less than 0.4. However, most areas that have been identified as private forest have more wild weeds and less forestry species trees. But still our land, which is close to the NH17 B and has high potential, has been arbitrarily marked as private forest.”
“As the officers are in no mood to pay heed to our grievances, we have decided to hold a meeting with the villagers, followed by a mass protest demanding dissolution of the committee, which we believe is trying to make us political victims,” added Borkar, who is one of the affected land-owners in the village.
Property owners Roquizino D’Souza and Bhoj Naik stated, “The moment we received information about our property being demarcated as private forest, we immediately submitted our objections to the Forest Department. However, only a personal hearing was given, wherein forest officials said that Google Maps show the presence of a huge forest cover. This is totally wrong and can be assessed by inspecting the site, and not through Google Maps. If the government fails to correct this, then we are sure that the villagers will come onto the streets.”
Meanwhile, when contacted for his reaction to the claims made by Sancoale villagers, Member Secretary of the South Goa Forest Division Committee, Vikas Dessai, refused to comment, citing limitation of powers to speak with the media about the issue.
