Will protect Aravallis, says Javadekar

The Aravallis, the oldest plateau mountain range in the country, is suffering an identity crisis of sorts with the Haryana government and the Environment ministry still debating over the definition of ‘forests’ in the state.

A lot depends on this definition as it would be crucial in deciding how much of this green lungs of the NCR will be protected. Keeping this in mind, the union minister for environment, forest and climate change (MOEF) Prakash Javadekar said a new policy will be framed to protect the Aravallis.

Javadekar, who visited the area on Monday to get a clear picture of the forest cover, said, “We will frame a comprehensive policy taking into account all pervious judgments of the Supreme Court (SC) related to the issue of protecting the Aravallis.”

“We plan to increase the ecological balance in the environment by protecting the Aravallis,” the minister stressed.

If pervious SC judgments are taken into account, then the most important of them would be the MC Mehta Vs Union of India judgment,2004, restricting mining in the Aravallis.

The minister’s statement did little to assure green activists who termed the whole exercise as “vague”.

“The Haryana government has held for many decades that there is no deemed forest in the state as per its dictionary. When the government is still unclear about what constitutes a forest, how can they protect the Aravallis?” said Col (retd) Sarvadaman Oberoi, environmentalist.

This view was cemented by a letter of the then forest secretary, Y S Malik, in May 2014, when Haryana withdrew from an exercise to identify deemed forests as per the dictionary meaning in the Mangar area, as directed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), experts said.

On April 1,2014, the NGT had asked the government that the deemed forest be identified with weeks. However, Haryana held that MoEF would have to make guidelines for the whole country, and not specifically for Haryana, and get them approved by the SC. “Now, almost two years later, despite a change in government...Haryana has still not assessed areas that shall mandatorily be treated as forest,” said Amina Shervani, green activist.

Further, experts also pointed out that it was the MoEF which has not submitted the guidelines to the SC. Instead, it has tied itself in knots by making revisions that substantively diluted the guidelines to such an extent that there will hardly be any area that can meet the criteria of ‘forest’ as defined in the dictionary.

“Scrub forests are excluded; sacred groves are excluded; and open forests are also sought to be excluded. Areas where revenue record of rights and cadastral maps are complete are also excluded... After all this, the MoEF minister is planning to frame the Aravallis protection policy. This is the audacity of the government,” said Vivek Kamboj, environmentalist.