The Karnataka government will appoint 10 forest settlement officers who will work towards notifying Section 4 forest lands as reserve forests. Most of these lands were notified in 1920 as forests under Section 4 of the Karnataka Forest Act but even after several years, the final settlement towards declaring them as reserve forests has not been completed. According to the Act, to designate any piece of land as a reserved forest, the government first issues a notification under Section 4 specifying, as nearly as possible, the extent and limits of such land. The government then appoints a forest settlement officer who concludes the final settlement. The government, under Section 17 of the Act, should finally publish a notification to declare the land as a reserve forest. However, there is no stipulated time frame within which the forest land thus notified should be declared as a reserve forest. Speaking to indianexpress.com, principal chief conservator of forest RK Singh said, “We have around 1.27 lakh hectares of Section 4 forest land waiting to be declared as reserve forests. Forest settlement officers will be appointed and they will work towards the final settlement. The state government is seriously considering the issue.” Most of these forest lands, as pointed out by senior officials of the forest department, have been lost to encroachments. “The Supreme Court in 2018 directed the state government to clear all the notified cases pending for decades. In the Sakleshpura range, over 7,200 acres of land was notified under Section 4, which means that it is a forest area even though it is yet to be declared as a reserve forest. However, we can see resorts and encroachment inside the forest. Some of the declared forest areas under Section 4 have been lost to illegal grants by the revenue department and to encroachments. Unfortunately, even the forest department did not take any action under the provisions of the law,” a forest official said on the condition of anonymity. According to the official papers of the forest department dated May 20, 2014, the government has, under the deemed forest category, proposed another 1,21,716 hectares of the land under Section 4.
