PANAJI
A division bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Friday issued notice to the Goa government on an appeal filed by the Goa Foundation against the NGT judgement that upheld the reports of the State’s Forest Review Committee and its methodology adopted.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) via an order dated September 12, 2023, had rejected a plea filed by the Goa Foundation pleading to set aside the Second Review Committee constituted by the Goa government on private forest.
It may be recalled that the Thomas and Araujo Forest Expert Committees had submitted their reports in December 2018, declaring 8.5 sq km of Goa as forest (finally), and more than 20 sq km as forest (provisional). In 2020, the State government appointed a Review Committee to examine the reports.
Dissatisfied with the NGT judgement, the Goa Foundation filed an appeal under the provisions of the NGT Act, which came up for consideration before the Supreme Court on Friday.
The Goa Foundation had alleged before the NGT that a huge number of survey numbers identified as private forest were removed from examination by the Second Review Committee without any ground verification solely on the basis of satellite maps procured by the forest department from the Forest Survey of India at Dehradun.
In pursuance of its work, the Review Committee submitted several reports to the NGT. It first called them “interim reports” but later changed the terminology to “part final reports”. All the reports were challenged by the Goa Foundation.
The Goa Foundation told the NGT that the Review Committee was appointed solely to confirm the areas identified “provisionally” as forest and that it could not have reviewed the 8.5 sq km “finally” identified as forest. The Foundation also challenged the methodology of removing survey numbers without a site inspection or verification, as unsound and having no basis, as ground verification was always followed by committees in the past.
