10 years on, 35 acres of forest land recovered

After a battle of more than 10 years, forest officials reclaimed 35 acres of land worth Rs 350 crore in Bhoothanahalli, touching the Bannerghatta National Park boundary and part of the elephant corridor.

The land is part of the Bhoothanahalli forest, spread across 425 acres, nearly all of which was occupied by encroachers, thanks to a blunder committed in 1959 by the Revenue Department. The entire land was declared as gomala (grazing land) and distributed to many applicants. In the following years, the land changed many hands.

However, in 2006, the then Anekal Range Forest Officer (RFO) G Venkatesh booked a case against 86 members who had encroached on the land. The department based its case on the original notification for survey number 67 which declared a parcel of 535 acres as Bhoothanahalli forest.

Officials had to begin from the scratch to identify the forest land. When the boundaries were fixed, the department found that a local politician had built a residential layout on about 200 acres and another 225 acres was used for agriculture.

Sources said the encroachers, backed by political leaders, tried to influence the department to drop the case. Officials stood their ground and a prolonged legal battle ensued following which the court vacated the stay on reclaiming another 35 acres of land.

“The market value of the land in the area is estimated at Rs 10 crore per acre. Many powerful people are trying to get a piece of the buffer zone. The encroachers had sold sites to none other than forest officials,” said a source.

On Monday, Venkatesh, now the Assistant Conservator of Forest in South Subdivision, along with Anekal RFO Krishna and Kaggalipura RFO Gopal, removed encroachments on 35 acres and planted saplings to bring the land under the green cover.

“The entire area would have become a residential colony had it not been for the case filed in 2006. We still need to recover more than 100 acres,” he said.

Bhanu Prakash R of Bannerghatta Nature Conservation Trust said the issue was only the tip of the iceberg. “As per the rule, the government needs to set up an eco-sensitive zone monitoring committee and start clearing encroachments on thousands of acres. There is rampant encroachment of forest land across the buffer zone with quarries and resorts coming up unchecked. We have written to the Ministry of Environment and Forests as well as the state government, but nothing has changed on the ground,” he said.