AUGUSTO RODRIGUES
PANJIM: A staggering close to 80% of the survey numbers reviewed by the committee to identify private forests, were ultimately not classified as private forests, thereby leaving them open to “development”, a more decent word for rampant and unadulterated construction.
The figure on the Forest Department website is scary: 2,442 survey numbers were reviewed by the Review Committee 2 to identify private forests. 1,940 of those Survey Numbers did not qualify as private forest.
The website shows 348 survey numbers qualified to be retained as private forests but the area of the unlocked private forests is not available on the Forest Department website.
The Review Committee 2, formed to identify private forests, has in its 8th Part Final Report identified 558.5719 m2 as private forest but is unable to determine the total land unlocked since the start of the review in 2020.
Why?
“The role of the Review Committee is not to detail the total area of land unlocked as private forests but to identify the total private forests in Goa. Hence, all reports only mention the area of land identified as private forests,” informed Kamal Datta, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests.
Datta wants those interested in knowing the land out of the private forest area to go through the task of getting the survey numbers from the website and checking the area of each physically.
The purpose of the committee is to ascertain land that is private forests. If anyone wants to know the area, the same can be obtained through the survey numbers provided in the website. It is not the work of the Review Committee to detail the area unlocked. The work of the committee is to purely ascertain which survey numbers qualify as private forests”, said Datta.
But activists and other researchers are asking why for the sake of transparency, the exact area not classified is not mentioned for ready reference.
“Prima facie, it appears very sinister that the area that has been unlocked as private forest is not being made public but the survey numbers are. The survey numbers don’t tell the full story. The destruction of Private Forests is the burning issue and it suits to hide the figure,” thinks researcher activist Swapnesh Sherlekar.