Pune: The transfer of 29 acres and 15 gunthas of reserved forest land from Richie Rich Cooperative Housing Society in Kondhwa Budruk will be completed within a month, Pune district collector Jitendra Dudi told TOI on Saturday.Following a Supreme Court directive on May 15, Dudi instructed officials on May 17 to inspect the land and begin the process of its handover to the forest department. “An inspection found that there were no encroachments. The 7/12 extracts will be updated on priority, and the transfer will be carried out within a month.” The apex court quashed the 1998 allotment of 11.89 hectares (nearly 30 acres) to the housing society and declared the transaction illegal. Though the land was originally earmarked for agricultural use, it was sold to the society in 2007 with the environment ministry’s clearance. The court said that this violated a 1996 Central govt ban on diverting forest land for non-forestry purposes. The land was notified as reserved forest in 1879 and had continued to be recorded as such in official documents, the court said. No valid process of de-reservation had occurred since 1934. The court found that the land diversion stemmed from a nexus between politicians, bureaucrats, and builders, carried out under the pretext of rehabilitation.About the SC’s three-month deadline to complete the transfer, a revenue department official said, “With no encroachments, the handover of land can be done easily as only the necessary changes shall have to be made in records.”Forest department officials said the order could set a nationwide precedent for similar restorations. They said more than 1.5 lakh hectares of forest land across the country still remain under the control of the revenue department. Of these, Pune district accounts for 2,460.73 hectares (6,078 acres). “These land parcels in Pune will also be restored in accordance with the SC ruling, after necessary verification,” the revenue official said.The court has directed all state govts to reclaim the diverted forest land from allottees and dedicate it to afforestation. In this backdrop, the state revenue department has asked all districts to submit detailed reports on such holdings.Former bureaucrat Mahesh Zagade said the law is clear that forest land cannot be diverted for any other use. “Doing so is a criminal act. As custodians of natural resources, IAS and forest officers have a sacred responsibility to protect forest land. When political pressure is applied, they must stand firm. Unfortunately, this has not happened in many cases. It is a telling commentary on administrative decay that it took 27 years to restore this land,” he said.The May 15 ruling came in response to a petition filed in 2007 by Nagrik Chetna Manch, a citizens’ group, which challenged the diversion of the reserved forest land for private construction.
