Chief Justice slams Amarinder: he himself is club member, what action can we expect

On Monday, 25 judges of the High Court had gone on unprecedented leave, protesting over Justice Roy’s action in seeking explanations from two judges who are members of the private golf club which is involved in litigation board was none other than former Chief Secretary Y S Ratra, who is also an ex-officio member of the Forest Hill Club.

Interestingly, Gupta today brought on record a letter written by the then Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Kamal Nath, on April 3, 1995 to then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

The letter is related to the proposal to denotify 4747 acres closed under the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA) in six villages, including Nadda and Karoran, where the club has been set up. The land is jointly owned by Lt Col B S Sandhu (retd), of Worldwide Immigration and Consultancy Services (WWICS), Dashmesh Academy, Sandhu’s son Devinder and the WWICS.

The denotification was sought for setting up a new township to the northwest of Chandigarh. In his letter, Nath had said that the present recorded forest area in Punjab was only 5.7 per cent and the areas closed under the PLPA constituted 52.63 per cent of the State’s total forest cover.

After denotification, the forest cover would go down to 2.7 per cent, which would be one of the lowest in the country and far below the 33 per cent envisaged in the National Forest Policy.

Nath also stated that the denotification would not be in conformity with the Forest Conservation Act 1980 as the areas sought to be denotified were located in the ecologically fragile Shivalik tract. That was the very objective of closing these areas under the PLPA and bringing them under the control of the State Forest Department.