Above: An NTPC thermal power plant is also one of the beneficiaries of flouting of rules/jayadev13/commons.wikimedia.org

In a scathing indictment of the UP government for allowing private claims on forest lands in contravention of its order, the apex court asked if it had been sleeping for 26 years

By Atul Chandra in Lucknow

Mining versus rights of tribals over forest land has been a familiar story in Mirzapur district where unscrupulous forest officials allowed mining leases in the reserved forest areas. Recently, the Supreme Court reprimanded the UP government for not having “any disciplinary control over” its forest officers in spite of its order fixing 1994 as the cut-off year for the process.

The dispute dates back to the 1980s when the UP government declared Dudhi and Robertsganj, two tehsils of Mirzapur district, as reserved forest land, affecting tribals who had been living there for decades. The Court had registered a writ petition on a letter written by an NGO, Banwasi Sewa Ashram, under Article 32, regarding the claims of tribals to the land in these tehsils.

On December 15, 1983, the Supreme Court gave directions for the appointment of a high-powered committee “for the purpose of adjudicating upon the claims of the persons belonging to Scheduled Castes and backward classes of their land entitlements as also to examine the hereditary and customary rights of farmers in those tehsils and to adjudicate the claims of tribals of their customary rights with respect to fodder, fuel, wood, small timber…flower, fruits and minor forest produce”. The committee found that “roughly one lakh eighty thousand acres” of land was in unauthorised occupation. The panel identified “433 villages lying south of Kaimur Range of the Mirzapur District to be relevant for the present dispute. Of these, 299 were in Dudhi tehsil and the remaining 134 in Robertsganj tehsil.

Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for UP, said that even after the Supreme Court ordering in 1986 that no claims would be settled after July 18, 1994, the forest settlement officer was still settling “illegal” claims “in favour of people who were not even residents of the state”. In some cases, he said, claims were settled for lands where these had already been settled. Mehta sought quashing of all such cases. The state government reportedly sought that orders of “the forest settlement officers and the district judge which declared the land to be jungle, bushes, river and to be part of proposed reserve forest but have been illegally declared as banjar (barren) and thereafter pattas given in favour of third parties” should be set aside.

Refusing to pass an order without hearing the parties in whose favour the claims had been settled, a bench of Justices Arun Mishra, MR Shah and BR Gavai said: “This has been going on since 1994 and now after 26 years you have come. You were sleeping for 26 years and now you are asking us to remove everyone.” The Court said that industries might have invested crores in the area so it would not be proper to pass any ex parte order. “Before we declare the allotments as void, we would like to hear them. There are NTPC, UP Electricity Board and others. We simply can’t remove them who are there for over 20 years,” the judges said. They also wanted to know if the forest settlement officer was still settling claims.

Although the 1994 order said that no third party or industry could be allotted land in these reserved forest areas, according to Mehta, there may be over 1,000 beneficiaries of the illegalities done by forest settlement officers. Some of the beneficiaries include public sector units like National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL), Uttar Pradesh Electricity Board and others. They were now claiming ownership to the reserved forest land.

“What were you doing all these years? Do you not have any disciplinary control over these forest officers?” the bench asked.

The judgment in this case came in 1986 and said that the “question that required detailed consideration was relating to the claims of Adivasis living within Dudhi and Robertsganj Tehsils…to land and related rights”.

The 1986 judgment was cited by the National Green Tribunal in its 2016 order in another case pertaining to Makribari, Panari, Markundi and Kota villages in Mirzapur district. A large part of the land in these villages was declared reserved forest through notifications issued by the UP government between 1969 and 1977 under Section 4 of the Forest Act.

The land became contentious after the UP Cement Corporation Limited (UPCCL), which had mining rights in the area, turned sick in 1992. Following its closure on the recommendations of the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), Jai Prakash Associates Limited (JAL) emerged as the highest bidder for UPCCL.

JAL filed a civil suit in the Allahabad High Court to seek renewal of UPCCL’s mining leases in their favour. The Court ruled in JAL’s favour and found unsustainable “the objection of the state government for renewal of the mining leases in respect of 1,033.66 hectares out of 2,168 hectares, the area covered under the mining leases but included within the Notification issued under Section 4 of the Forest Act”.

Quoting from the Supreme Court’s judgment of 1986, the NGT said that the demarcation pillars were to be raised by the forest department to identify the reserve forest land. The apex court also directed that all villages and gram sabhas be informed about the demarcation so that people who were likely to be affected could decide if they needed to file any claim. Just as in the case of Dudhi and Robertsganj, the forest settlement officer, after “elaborate settlement of rights”, transferred the land in Kota and Panari villages, which included mining lease areas of UPCCL and UP State Mineral Development Corporation (UPSMDC), to Jai Prakash Associates via auction. Subsequently, a Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) in a letter dated September 8, 2008, told the principal chief conservator of forests, UP, “to ensure that no land notified under Section 4 of the Forest Act is allowed to be used/ leased for mining and other non-forest uses” without first obtaining approval under the Forest Act, 1980, and the permission of the Supreme Court.

The CEC in its recommendation before the Supreme Court made two important points. The first recommendation said that the “orders passed by the Forest Settlement Officer for exclusion of 1083.23 ha of area notified under Section 4 of the Indian Forest Act, from the reserved forest should be set aside. All these areas should be included in the reserved forest”.

It also said that renewal/transfer of mining leases in favour of JAL should be allowed only after obtaining approval under the Forest (Conservation) Act for the above areas.

The second recommendation was that “all permissions granted for grant/renewal of the mining leases and other non-forestry activities on areas notified under Section 4 of the Indian Forest Act and for which settlement of rights was done as per the … Supreme Court judgment dated 20.11.1986…should immediately be revoked by the UP government”.

What is more important, the right of tribals over forest land or those of over 1,000 companies which were allowed to invest in the region in contravention of law?

The ball is in the Supreme Court.