Tamil Nadu Assembly passes Bill for quick declaration of reserve forests

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday adopted a Bill to amend the TN Forest Act, 1882 to expeditiously declare compensatory afforestation lands as reserved forests.

The statement of objects and reasons of the amendment bill, piloted by Forest Minster K Ponmudy, said: "Whenever any forest land is used for non-forest purpose, the user agency shall provide specified extent of land for the purpose of compensatory afforestation. Further, as per the guidelines dated January 24, 2023 issued by the Government of India on the accredited compensatory afforestation, the said compensatory afforestation land should be declared as protected forest within the time frame prescribed by the Central government."

However, the procedures prescribed in the Tamil Nadu Forest Act, 1882 for declaring any land as reserved forest are elaborate and time consuming. Hence, in order to declare the compensatory afforestation lands as reserved forests expeditiously, it has been decided to make a special provision.

Further, for constituting a land as reserved forest under the Act of 1882, the government has to issue two notifications, one to declare the intention and another to declare the land as reserved forest.

As the requirement to issue notifications on two occasions by the government has resulted in considerable delay in constitution of reserved forest, it was felt necessary to delegate the powers of the government to issue notification to an officer of the Revenue department, not below the rank of district collector.

The amendment is in view of such factors.