Team Herald
PANJIM: The Supreme Court has acted again as the protector of Goa’s beleaguered forests under attack from the land mafia and mining lobby, as it passed an order granting interim relief against the conversion of large tracts identified as forest land by two expert committees.
“We know how forests are being destroyed in Goa,” observed the bench comprising Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Monday, while passing its order on the land that is spread across 855 survey numbers.
This is the second time in less than a month that the Apex Court has stood as a guard for Goa’s forests. On February 6, Supreme Court Justice Satish Chandra Sharma had remarked, “Please don’t turn Goa into a concrete jungle,” dismissing the State government’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) challenging the High Court’s order to impose a construction ban in several areas covered by the Outline Development Plan (ODP).
Monday’s Supreme Court intervention comes after a petition filed by the environmental NGO Goa Foundation seeking a status quo order on lands identified as private forests by two expert committees – headed by VTThomas and Francisco Araujo – in their 2018 reports. These reports, after extensive field visits, identified a total of 8.64 sq km of private forest land across North and South Goa, noting that 855 survey numbers were “final” private forest areas, with the rest categorized as “provisional”.
Senior Advocate Norma Alvares, appearing for the Goa Foundation and assisted by Advocate Om D’Costa, argued that although no trees had been felled yet, the issuance of conversion sanads – official permits to change the land’s use – was a precursor to deforestation. She presented evidence of such a sanad being granted to the M/s Bhutani project in Sancoale, a plot that had been marked as a private forest by the expert committee.
The bench raised questions about how such conversion sanads could be issued while the matter was still under judicial review.
In response, the Court granted the interim relief, ordering that no further conversion sanads be issued concerning the identified forest lands. The Goa government was also directed to file a counter affidavit within the next four weeks.
The 855 survey numbers in question, listed in the prayer clause of the petition, are those identified as “final” private forests in the expert committees’ reports of December 2018. The Goa Foundation’s petition called for a status quo order to protect these areas pending the final resolution of the case.
This latest ruling follows a series of judicial concerns regarding the rapid loss of Goa’s natural heritage. In 2012, the state government had formed the two expert committees to identify and demarcate private forest areas, but these committees were disbanded in March 2018, even as their final reports were pending submission. The State government, however, chose to classify most of the identified plots as “provisional,” leading to further legal challenges from the Goa Foundation. The matter was eventually escalated to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and, subsequently, the Supreme Court.