PANJIM: The National Green Tribunal (NGT), Western Zone Bench, Pune on Tuesday, expressed its hope that the Second Review Committee constituted by the Goa government will complete its work of reviewing the reports submitted by the Thomas and Araujo Committees in identifying the private forest land in the State within the next one year.
The NGT stated that till the final decision is taken with respect to whether the area being excluded from the list as final forest land by the RC-II which was identified by T&A Committees as private forest, no permission shall be granted by the State for any development work in the said survey numbers and this exercise should be completed within three months.
By a notification, the Goa government had appointed the Second Committee to review the report submitted by two former forest officers V T Thomas and Francisco Araujo Committees for both the districts with the condition that it shall examine the provisionally identified survey numbers identified as private forests.
The petitioner NGO Goa Foundation had prayed to quash the four interim reports, filed by the State government, Review Committee on Private Forest and the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest. It prayed to quash the methodology adopted for identification and demarcation of the private forest and to reinstate the survey Nos. of Salvador-do-Mundo, which were identified as private forest under the NGT orders, as private forests and likewise to reinstate all the survey numbers of villages of Dabolim, Chicalim, Sancoale and Cortalim.
The Goa Foundation had been pursuing meticulously the progress of implementation of the order dated December 12, 1996, passed by the Supreme Court in the case of T N Godavarman for last 25 years. Pursuant to that order, the Goa government had set up Sawant Committee to demarcate private forests in the State on February 6, 1997, which identified 47 sq kms of private forest, where after the State constituted “Karapurkar Committee” on Sept 4, 2000 to review the work done by Sawant panel.
The SC restrained Karapurkar Committee from reviewing the work done by the Sawant Committee in an order on May 4, 2001 in writ petition filed by the Goa Foundation against the Goa government and others. Thereafter, the Karapurkar Committee restricted its work to identification of new areas only. A total 67.02 sq kms of private forest area was identified by these committees i.e. Sawant Committee and Karapurkar Committees in the final report on December 16, 2002. No demarcation of private forest area was carried out on the ground by either of the two committees.
On July 2, 2003, pursuant to an order passed by the High Court of Bombay at Goa in a PIL filed by the applicant, the Forest Department commenced the demarcation of the private forest areas, which had been identified by the two committees, which was completed in five years on June 30, 2008, reducing the private forest from 67.02 sq kms to 41.20 sq kms.
The exclusion of 20 sq km area was again challenged by the Goa Foundation in a writ petition, which was transferred to the Tribunal.