Team Herald
PANJIM: In a major development, the State government has decided to reject the report of the Forest Department’s Review Committee on private forest identification and demarcation. The Committee’s failure to hear the aggrieved people forced the government to order for the formation of new review committees.
Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant has directed that a new review committee be formed to mark the actual private forest land in the State considering the Sawant-Karapurkar report as a base. The directions came after Deputy Chief Minister and Forest Minister Vijai Sardesai moved a note pointing to glaring errors in the committee’s finding.
Sardesai, soon after taking charge as Forest Minister, had held a meeting with the officials to review the private forest issue.
He had expressed fears that the report could meet the fate of Coastal Zone Management Planning (CZMP), which was prepared without taking into consideration the ground reality and keeping the stakeholders out of the planning process.
He had pointed out that during the formation of Sawant-Karapurkar committee report and subsequent exercises, public consultations had not been held. To strengthen his argument he explained that when Digambar Kamat undertook to do the Regional Plan 2021 it was prepared after a consultative process and so the government has honoured this.
Sources revealed that Sardesai, in a note moved to the Chief Minister, has pointed out glaring lacunae in the methodologies adopted by the review committee to achieve the terms of reference with respect to the Sawant and Karapurkar Committees.
Understanding that no public consultation was held, the Minister felt that it is unjust to have not given the land owners a public hearing or an explanation of whether and how their land fulfils the required criteria before having demarcated the land as private forest.
Speaking to the media, Sardesai objected to the fixation of a five per cent sampling intensity for field verification and said it is incorrect to be assumptive with regard to demarcation of land as forest.
He said that the public consultation should have been held before the report was finalised. He also said there were cases of land owners not being consulted or informed before their assets were marked as private forest depending on ocular survey.
Sources said that while proposing a rejection of the report, Sardesai was of the strong opinion that the criteria laid down by the State government needs to be followed in toto and not by stratified random sampling as the actual position should be known before marking the forest.
