The Bombay High Court came down heavily on the Maharashtra government for what it termed a “defiant approach” in continuing to automatically declare lands vested in it as “private forests”, despite repeated rulings of the Supreme Court holding otherwise.
The ruling could affect hundreds of landholders across Maharashtra, from individuals and housing societies to companies and developers, whose rights have remained uncertain for years after the State claimed that their lands automatically vested in it as “private forests” under Maharashtra Private Forests (Acquisition) Act, 1975.
Hearing a batch of petitions by landholders, the court said the government’s failure to follow binding Supreme Court rulings had led to avoidable litigation and uncertainty over land titles.
It said it was “high time” the state’s higher authorities took the required steps to strictly follow the prescribed procedure.
What was the matter before the Bombay High Court?
A division Bench of Justices Bharati H Dangre and Manjusha A Deshpande was dealing with a large batch of 184 petitions filed by landholders challenging the State’s action of treating their lands as “private forests” that stood vested in the government under the 1975 Act.
The petitions were not confined to one category of landowners. They included individuals, families, cooperative housing societies, charitable trusts, educational institutions, companies and developers from Raigad, Pune, Thane and other parts of Maharashtra, whose lands were claimed by the State to have vested in it as private forests.
The key issue before the court was whether such vesting could take place automatically or whether the State was first required to follow the procedure prescribed under the Act and earlier forest laws before issuing a notification declaring the land to be a private forest. The petitioners questioned notifications and revenue entries by which the State claimed ownership over their lands on the premise that they automatically became “private forests” when the 1975 Act came into force.
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What is a ‘private forest’?
The Maharashtra Private Forests (Acquisition) Act, 1975, was enacted to acquire certain privately owned forest lands free from all encumbrances and vest them in the State for conservation and management, extinguishing the rights, titles and interests of owners and others.
However, the Act does not treat every privately owned land with trees as a “private forest”. Instead, Section 2(f) lists multiple categories of land that may qualify as “private forest,’ including lands already declared or recorded as forests under earlier laws or pre-existing legal framework, lands covered by pending forest proceedings, sites of dwelling houses and appurtenant lands constructed in such a forest and certain lands against which action had been initiated under the Indian Forest Act, 1927.
The present litigation concerns only one of those categories, Section 2(f)(iii), which covers lands where proceedings under Section 35 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, had begun before August 30, 1975, when the Maharashtra Private Forests (Acquisition) Act came into force.
The High Court observed that the law no longer permits the State to assume that every land answering the description of a forest automatically became government property on August 30, 1975. Before any land can be declared a “private forest”, the statutory process, including notice to landholders and consideration of objections by the committee under the Act, must first be followed, it added.
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What has the Supreme Court held?
The division bench said the legal position governing “private forests” is no longer uncertain and had been “crystallised to a large extent” through Supreme Court rulings, particularly two decisions delivered over a decade apart, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra (2014) and Rohan Vijay Nahar v. State of Maharashtra (2025).
The first case arose from a dispute involving land owned by Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd after it challenged the State’s decision to treat its Vikhroli (Eastern suburban Mumbai) land as a “private forest” that had vested in the government under the 1975 Act. The Supreme Court held that the State could not bypass the statutory safeguards contained in Section 35 of the Indian Forest Act merely because it sought to invoke the 1975 Act.
The 2025 decision by Supreme Court in Rohan Vijay Nahar case concerned landowners from Pune district whose lands were similarly claimed to have automatically vested in the State as “private forests”.The Supreme Court reaffirmed the principle it laid down in 2014 ruling and clarified the procedure that must be followed before any land can be notified as a private forest.
Referring to Nahar’s case, the High Court said the Supreme Court reiterated that declaration of land as a “private forest” is not automatic merely because the Act came into force on August 30, 1975. Instead, the competent authority must issue notice to the landholder, consider objections, place the matter before the statutory Committee and only thereafter issue the notification contemplated under the Act.
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Why did the High Court pull up the State?
The High Court summed up the legal position by holding that “The Notification declaring the land as ‘Private Forest’ is required to be issued after following the procedure prescribed under Section 2(f)(iii), and in the event, the said procedure is not followed, the deeming effect contemplated under Section 3 of the Private Forest Act, 1975, resulting in the vesting of ‘private forest’ in the State Government, shall not happen.” It added that the State “should be conscious” of the fact that “if a flaw lies at its end”, there can be no declaration about any land to be “Private Forest”.
The Bench observed that despite repeated pronouncements by the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court, the State continued to proceed on an interpretation that had already been rejected. It remarked, “The attempt on the part of the State, which assumes that on 30th August 1975, whichever land was a ‘Forest’ automatically becomes ‘Private Forest’ and vests in the State Government is a misconception.”
Calling it “really unfortunate”, the judges said the State continued to ignore “clear rulings” of the Supreme Court, the “highest court of this country,” resulting in a large number of petitions before the High Court.
The court reminded the government that under Articles 141 and 144 of the Constitution, Supreme Court judgments are binding on every authority in the country and all authorities are required to act in aid of those decisions.
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“We must also express that though we do not take pleasure in summoning the Officers of the State Government before us and once the law has been laid down, we expect the same to be followed by one and all, as no one is above law,” the HC observed.
The Bench cautioned that continued disregard of binding precedents could invite judicial action.
