‘Weak administration’: Delhi high court raps forest dept over encroachment

The Delhi high court on Wednesday expressed concern over the failure of the Delhi government’s forest department to monitor encroachment of forest lands again, saying that the administration was very weak.

“Encroachment doesn’t happen overnight. You people aren’t using any technology. This is (a) very weak administration. Special Task Force (STF) is now involved in this. Their grievances are that people from the forest department are not helping them,” a bench led by acting chief justice Manmohan said to advocate Satyakam, who represented the forest department.

The court took a grim view while hearing a plea in which it had taken cognizance on its own of the rising level of pollution in the city.

The bench, also comprising justice Manmeet PS Arora, directed the forest department to file an affidavit indicating the total number of reserved and protected forests notified by it in the city and further specify the areas notified as private forest.

In January, the high court directed the forest department to file an affidavit specifying if there was any encroachment in Asola Bhati Wildlife Sanctuary and Central Ridge, saying that the land in the forest area must be free from all encroachments and should not house unauthorised colonies. The bench also directed it to mention if any court had passed an order restraining the removal or demolition of the encroachments.

During the hearing on Wednesday, amicus curiae Kailash Vasudev submitted that the forest department was notifying parks and lawns as forests. “There is an orchard here that has been notified as forest,” the counsel said while adding that the forest lands housed unauthorised colonies.

Expressing dismay, the bench said that notifying parks and lawns as forest was not correct. “There is a difference between a lawn and a forest,” the bench remarked.

Admitting the problem of encroachment that has taken place again, the forest department’s counsel, however, submitted that a coordinate bench was already examining the issue of notifying parcels of land in Delhi as forest land.

To be sure, the Delhi government in 2020 submitted before the court that unauthorised colonies in forest areas are prohibited from being regularised under the Centre’s October 2019 notification— the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Recognition of Property Rights of Residents in Unauthorised Colonies) Regulations, 2019. It said that the regulations clearly stated that it barred recognition of rights over land in reserved or notified forest. Even under the Urban Development Ministry’s Revised Guidelines of 2007 for regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi, settlements, which in part or entirely, fell in notified or reserved forests were not to be considered for the relief, it added.

Interestingly, a coordinate bench of the high court, which was previously hearing pleas dealing with the well-being of the Ridge area, pulled up the Delhi government’s forest department in November for expressing helplessness to consider the issue of declaring un-encroached forest land in Delhi’s Ridge area as reserved forest. It had directed the Capital’s chief secretary to issue notification within two weeks and warned him of contempt for failing to act on the order.