The Odisha government has withdrawn an order issued on August 11, which told district officials that ‘deemed forests’ as a category would cease to exist under the recently amended Forest Act.
Key points
- ‘Deemed forests’ are forests that aren’t classified so, by the Centre or States, in their records. However, a 1996 judgment of the Supreme Court in the T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union Of India & Ors case entrusted States with identifying parcels of land “that conformed to the dictionary meaning of forest…irrespective of ownership” and expanding protections available under the Forest Act to them too.
- An updated Forest Act, passed by Parliament in August 2023, said that only forests classified and recorded as such after 1980 would be protected.
- Forest land officially diverted by the government for non-forestry purposes between 1980 and 1996 would also not be protected.
- However, the Environment Ministry clarified to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, constituted to examine provisions of the Bill, that the amendments did not fall afoul of the 1996 Supreme Court judgment.
- The Odisha government, since 1996, had with the help of expert committees at the district-level, identified nearly 66 lakh acres as ‘deemed forest’ but many of them were not officially notified as such in government records.
