Mistakes in deemed forest list continue to haunt Karnataka govt

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government continues to grapple with confusion over the classification of ‘Deemed Forest’ land, even as it recently assured the Centre that it would remove “undesirable” land parcels from the list.

The issue resurfaced during a proposal by MSPL Limited, which had sought forest clearance to begin mining operations in Ramanadurga village of Sandur, Ballari.

The company had won the rights to an erstwhile 'C' category mine and offered 74.35 acres of land in Belagavi as compensatory afforestation (CA) to make up for forest land diverted for mining.

However, the proposed Belagavi land was already marked as ‘Deemed Forest’ — raising red flags, as afforestation cannot be carried out on land already classified as forest.

Adding to the confusion, the Deputy Commissioner of Belagavi district and the Deputy Conservator of Forests clarified that the land in question was privately owned and had been wrongly included in the deemed forest list. They urged the immediate removal of these land parcels from the list.

Responding to the issue, the Karnataka government informed the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change that it has begun the process of reviewing and removing ineligible or misclassified lands from the ‘Deemed Forest’ list.

Following detailed discussions, the FAC decided to defer the clearance for the project, directing the state government to identify and offer an equal extent of non-forest land for CA purposes.