Officials recover 560 acres of land in Karnataka’s Srinivaspura state forest from encroachers

“As of today, 560 acres of forest land has been recovered by evicting encroachers. A tahsildar, Ramakrishnappa, had illegally entered the names of encroachers in revenue records and granted them forest land. This was done without consultation with the forest department,” Yedukondalu said.

Forest officials said that after the irregularities surfaced, disciplinary action was initiated against the erring officials and that the tahsildar and others involved in the illegal grant of forest land were removed from the service.

“The Supreme Court in the case of State of Karnataka and others v/s IS Nirvane Gowda and others in 2007 held that grants made by the revenue department in respect of forest land are of no consequence and would not confer title to the land…they are liable to be evicted,” he said in the statement.

The revenue authorities were not competent to deal with the property because it was part of the reserve forest, he added.

In the H K Subramanya v Shekar Shetty case dated June 13, 2014, the Karnataka High Court stated that after the enforcement of the Forest Conservation Act 1980, neither the state government nor any other authority can issue a direction for dereservation of reserved forest, permit use of any forest land for any non-forest purpose, or assign any forest land by lease or otherwise without the central government’s approval.

Yedukondalu further said in the statement that the high court ordered on April 17 that the forest department was at liberty to conduct a survey to demarcate the approximate area of the 4,060 acres notified as Srinivasapura state forest. “If in the survey, it was found that there have been encroachments, it would be open to the forest department to initiate appropriate action against the encroachers,” he added.

Senior officials from the forest department have confirmed that operations to evict encroachers from the forest land are on.