PANAJI
The State government-appointed review committee headed by the Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF) has so far identified over 37.36 sq km of additional private forest land across Goa, as it gears up to finalize its factual report by the end of this month. The committee is currently reviewing another 67 survey numbers.
The CCF-led panel is tasked with reassessing private forest areas identified earlier by the Thomas and Araujo Committees, as well as the Sawant and Karapurkar committees between 2012 and 2018.
According to official data available till February this year, the review committee has classified 784 survey numbers covering 3,736.8785 hectares, equivalent to 37.36 sq km as qualifying private forest land.
The committee has reviewed a total of 3,132 survey numbers so far, out of which 2,178 survey holdings were found non-qualifying for private forest status.
The review exercise is being undertaken in phases through “Part Final Reports” submitted periodically by the committee. Up to the 11th Part Final Report, the panel had identified 732 survey numbers covering 34.60 sq km as private forests.
Thereafter, between submission of the 11th report and February 16, 2026, an additional 52 survey numbers covering 2.76 sq km were classified as private forests under the 12th Part Final Report.
“The government has so far accepted all 11 reports and their findings,” an official said.
The data further revealed that 170 survey numbers involving around 1.49 sq km had already been marked as private forests by previous committees, demarcation teams and government forest records, and were repeated during the present review exercise.
Among the reports submitted so far, the 11th Part Final Report recorded 8.57 sq km of private forest spread across 198 survey numbers, while the 10th report identified 8.93 sq km across 104 survey holdings.
The committee was constituted by the State government to review and verify private forest claims and survey records following long-standing disputes over forest classification in Goa.
Under the State’s criteria for identification of private forests, the land must either be contiguous to government forest areas or, if isolated, have a minimum extent of five hectares.
