Union Environment Ministry seeks report from Karnataka on officer who allegedly mutated forest lands into revenue

N Ravindra Kumar, who was serving as the deputy conservator of forest (forest mobile squad) in Hassan in February 2022, had made the allegations.

The allegations pertain to 61.32 acres of forest lands spread over Survey number 22 in Thyavihalli in Hassan. (Express Archives)

Written by: Aksheev Thakur

3 min readBengaluruNov 14, 2023 06:26 PM IST First published on: Nov 14, 2023 at 06:24 PM IST

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has directed two senior officials of the Karnataka forest department to submit a report on the allegations made against B A Jagadeesh, Assistant Commissioner, Hassan, for illegal mutation of forest land to revenue land.

The allegations were made by N Ravindra Kumar, who was serving as the deputy conservator of forest (forest mobile squad) in Hassan in February 2022.

While the Union Environment Ministry had directed the Additional Chief Secretary (Forest, ecology and climate change) and Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (head of forest force) on March 4, 2022, to submit responses in this regard by March 15, 2022, they did not do so. The Union ministry had sent a reminder on April 28, 2023.

In its recent letter on November 6, the Union Environment Ministry has given the offices of the Additional Chief Secretary and PCCF (HoFF) time until December 5 this year. “If the reply is not received from the State government within a stipulated time period, it will be presumed that the violation of Forest Conservation Act, 1980, has taken place and necessary action will be initiated in the interest of Forest Conservation,” said the Union ministry.

The allegations pertain to 61.32 acres of forest lands spread over Survey number 22 in Thyavihalli in Hassan.

“This stretch of forest land mutated as forest lands has been in possession and control of the forest department since 1981 and all the records pertaining to the forest are in the name of the forest department as forests. There are a number of forest encroachments and the department is taking action as per the provisions of Karnataka Forest Act, 1963 to evict the encroachers,” Kumar stated in the letter to the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), constituted by the Supreme Court of India.

While the revenue department claimed the said land was in their possession, the forest department backed up its claim of ownership by stating that in 2014 an extent of 4.089 ha of the forest land in Survey number 22 was diverted according to the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act.

In 2003, an extent of 2.15 ha of the same Thyavihalli forests was diverted for the railway line adhering to the provisions of the Act. Kumar claimed that since forest clearances were asked for the infrastructural projects, how could the said lands be with the revenue department.

“The revenue officers are authorised to change mutation entry and record of rights

only on undisputed facts. The jurisdiction of revenue authority was totally barred when a dispute of title was claimed or made, as held by the full bench of the High Court in the case of Nagendra Singh (supra),” Kumar said in his letter to the CEC.

“The Assistant Commissioner has no authority to convert a forest land into a revenue land and this has been done in blatant disregard and contempt to The Hon’ble Supreme Court orders in the case of WP 202/1995 in Godavaraman Thirumalpad v/s Union of India.”