Karnataka: Two years after punishing officer over forest destruction, dept does U-turn

Bengaluru: Two years after issuing a government order penalising a retired forest officer for permitting felling of over 800 trees ‘in forest land’, the forest department has made a U-turn that the lands were not forest but private properties.

In an order dated August 20, 2024, the state government imposed a penalty on M L Manjunath, in the form of deduction of 5% of his pension for two years. The order came following a detailed charge sheet and inquiry by the Forest Department into an incident involving the felling of 808 trees in “reserved forest” under K Nidugane village gram panchayat of Madikeri taluk.

In 2020, the department served a charge sheet but did not receive a response for three months, giving way to a prolonged departmental inquiry held between May 2020 and November 2023.

The inquiry report dealt in detail with the allegations and ruled that the “charges have been proven,” which led to the order imposing a penalty.

The government order explicitly mentioned the illegalities. “Tree felling permission has been given on land parcels which are ‘bane’ lands. Since all ‘bane’ lands are statutory forests, diversion of forest land for non-forest activity required the permission of the Union government. The submission made by Manjunath shows that he was aware of the land’s status as a forest,” it said.

The officer’s claims that these were not forest lands were rejected by the inquiry committee, which also faulted him for not seeking a joint survey of the land and also questioned the failure to impose conditions, including the mandatory compensatory afforestation measures.

Volte-face before NGT

Following a report by DH on the penalty, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had taken up a suo motu case in September 2024. After two years, the tribunal’s southern zone bench disposed of the case last week (April 9) based on a submission by the forest department that the lands were not forest.

“The properties involved - Redeemed Sago (Sagu) Aga, Sago Bane and Paradhina Bane lands - originally belonged to private individuals and are alienated ‘bane’ lands. They are neither reserved forests nor deemed forests or government land,” it said.

Lack of accountability

Interestingly, the Forest Department repeatedly referred to the findings of the inquiry report in the government order as “claims made by the newspaper” before terming them false. “With respect to the newspaper report, it is stated that the report’s claims regarding alleged diversion of forest land are incorrect,” it said, adding that the “newspaper’s claims” regarding lack of afforestation measures were “denied as false”.

DH could not get a response from the principal chief conservator of forests (head of forest force) Meenakshi Negi on behalf of whom Karnataka’s standing counsel Darpan K M submitted the affidavit.