Responding to a news article published on December 18 with the caption ‘Revenue Department, major encroacher of forest lands’, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests P.K. Jha sought to clear some air, by clarifying that the Revenue Department was not an encroacher.
Most of the forest lands were earlier Government Revenue lands, which became forest lands after completion of due process of notifying the land as either Reserve Forests or Protected Forests.
Once such lands are notified as forests, the revenue records at village level are supposed to be corrected by reclassifying the Revenue land as Forest land in Pahani. In several cases, such reconciliation of records has not been taken up and it is aimed at completing it during the ongoing land reconciliation exercise, the statement by Mr. Jha explained.
As part of the exercise, in the first phase, both the departments were supposed to reconcile the records and in the second phase, detailed exercise would be taken up for final reconciliation. A total of 2.79 lakh acres is the extent of land which could not be reconciled, the statement said.
