PANAJI: How do you make private forests disappear? You simply hack them off and reclassify them. At least that is what seems to have been done in the case of 226 hectares of survey numbers of private forests marked as such by the Karapurkar forest committee.
A RTI reply to activist Manguesh Kuttikar on Monday states that the survey numbers are no longer marked as private forest, after a large scale deforestation took place there a couple of years back.
Survey Nos 99/0, 106/1, 98/0 97/6, 97/5, 97/4, 97/3, 97/2, 97/1 and 107/2 in Telaulim village a total of 188.71 hectares and Survey Nos 25, 42 and 44 of Curca village, a total of 38.12 hectares were marked as "new private forest areas identified by the Karapur Committee in North Goa while Survey No. 107/1 a total of 60 hectares in Curca village was identified by the Sawant Committee.
Action from the forest department is now awaited.
Fast forward to 2016 and in a reply to an RTI query seeking information on whether the above survey numbers were deleted from the list of private forest areas, received an affirmative reply.
In the reply, the forest department has said that all the above survey numbers have now been declared as ‘non-forest’ save for survey No. 107/2 of Telaulim village which has been declared as ‘part forest’.
How did an area that was clearly identified as private forest by the earlier two committees end up being deleted from the list? The answer, perhaps, lies in several complaints filed by Kuttikar of large scale ‘deforestation’ taking place.
Several complaints were filed, by Kuttikar, with the forest department in the year 2013 including the minister of forests that ‘large scale’ deforestation is taking place in the survey numbers, however no action was taken, despite the areas being then classified as private forests by the earlier two committees.
However, no action was taken. Two years later the areas no longer look like forests and no longer are classified as such. Kuttikar has now petitioned Minister of Forests Rajendra Arlekar against the deforestation in the area.
“It is important to preserve these lands for the sake of the environment as well as the water of the village which depends on the hills,” Kuttikar said.
