The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Gujarat to delete 10,935 hectares of land from “reserve forest area” to enable the state to carry out activities which are now prohibited in the reserved area.
A bench of Justices J.S. Khehar and C. Nagappan passed this order on an application from Gujarat for deletion of the area from 33,607 hectares as recommended by the court-appointed central empowered committee. The bench said Gujarat’s plea is justified as it has been accepted by the CEC on certain conditions, including that no mining activity should be conducted in those lands.
The bench pointed out that the CEC had endorsed the deletion of the areas approved by the forest settlement officer after acknowledging the rights of the villagers in response to the areas notified under Section 4 of the Forest Act. Further it was also reported that the areas have been excluded on genuine grounds. The CEC, however, imposed conditions that. no area will be allowed to be used for mining without obtaining approval under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.
On the application of ABG cements to allow limestone mining in 730 hectares of land, the bench said that Gujarat has stated that no lease has formerly been granted to the ABG Cement Limited in any of the areas notified under Section 4 of the Act and certain proposal regarding deletion of the lease submitted by the Government of India is pending consideration before the ministry of environment and forests (MOEF).
It said as the ministry of environment and forests has not taken any decision, it has again approached this court. The bench asked the competent authority to dispose of ABG’s application and if it emerges, that the relevant land is forest land, then and then alone, the concerned competent authority will further determine, whether permission should be granted to the applicant to carry on non-forest operations, namely, mining operations for conducting limestone mining. If the released land was originally not forest land, no forest clearance would be required.
