Who guards the forests?

On December 12, 1996, the Supreme Court of India, acting on a petition from T N Godavarman Thirumulpad highlighting several violations of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, delivered a landmark judgment expanding the Act’s applicability to all forests regardless of ownership, classification or notification.

Prior to this judgment, the Act applied only to notified forests, excluding even the areas leased before the law came into force on October 25, 1980. It was also interpreted as inapplicable to the renewal of leases after the Act came into existence.

Following Godavarman, the Supreme Court began receiving numerous interlocutory applications from across the country. To deal with these matters, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) was constituted in 2002 and was widely seen as an extension of the Court.

In its early years, the CEC was run largely by serving officers, and its recommendations were generally accepted by the Court. In recent years, however, activists have questioned its functioning in several cases. A few examples illustrate the concerns. 

Kodagu, a hilly district in Karnataka’s Western Ghats, has only about 42 per cent of its 4,150 sq km geographical area recorded as notified forest. Yet many other land tenures in the district also had substantial forest cover, with rights over them vested in the revenue department. Tree felling on private lands is governed by the Karnataka (Preservation) of Trees Act and regulated by the Forest Department.

From the 1980s onwards, rosewood, teak and other valuable species were cut and transported from various land tenures, including notified forests. Timber from forest lands was often diverted using permits issued for private holdings. Timber merchants made Kodagu their base and continued plundering trees with the connivance of sections of the bureaucracy.

When the Supreme Court’s 1996 order extended the Forest (Conservation) Act to wooded private lands, some officials sought a workaround by advising the Karnataka government to allow tree cutting in coffee estates in the name of shade regulation. 

The Court had clarified that only trees artificially planted by coffee growers could be cut, and naturally growing trees should not be harmed. But old practices persisted. In 2004, the head of the Forest Department reiterated the Court directive and prohibited further permissions for tree felling.

However, in 2007-08 thousands of trees on steep slopes in relatively undisturbed areas were permitted to be cut. Around the same time, authorities failed to prevent a road being carved through the forest, using heavy machinery to create a shorter route between Madikeri and Subramanya.

Following complaints from activists, members of the CEC visited the sites in early 2009 and held the officers responsible for violating the Supreme Court directives in Godavarman and for acting in contravention of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

However, the CEC submitted its report to the SC only in 2012. The Court took another four years to refer the matter to the National Green Tribunal (NGT). In 2022, the NGT constituted a committee, but no action followed. The guilty officers have since retired.

Such cases raise the question: Why do we need the CEC if blatant violations go unpunished? Administrative inaction has emboldened successor officers, while ecological damage manifests in the form of floods, landslides, and drought across Kodagu and the Western Ghats.  

The Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan presents another example. Until a few years ago, more than 100 mines were operational around it because about 54,835 ha area of its 881 sq km critical tiger habitat had not been mutated in favour of the Forest Department.

Under pressure from mining lobby, proposals emerged to redraw the boundary of the reserve to exclude mineral-rich areas. The CEC, which functioned as an extension of the Supreme Court until recently, visited Sariska in March and April 2024 to examine issues related to vehicular traffic carrying pilgrims to Pandupole Hanuman temple within the critical tiger habitat. 

Among its recommendations was the rationalisation of habitat boundary by the end of 2024. The proposal was swiftly approved by the Rajasthan State Wildlife Board on June 23, 2024, the National Tiger Conservation Authority two days later and the National Board for Wildlife the next day. The revised notification excluded 42 sq km of mineral-rich area from the critical habitat and added 43 sq km of forest on the northern boundary to compensate. 

While hearing the matter on September 18, 2025, an SC bench led by CJI B R Gavai criticised the haste with which such an important issue—given the ecological significance of tigers—had been decided, and sent the matter back to the state for reconsideration. Once the boundary of any CTH is redrawn, it opens the floodgates for similar proposals elsewhere.

The Real Estate Regulatory Authority was also recently slammed by an SC bench, which found that retired bureaucrats heading it were not serving the public interest and even suggested winding it up. The CEC too has ex-bureaucrats who have not effectively fought for conservation. With the NGT already handling environmental issues, the CEC appears to duplicate institutional functions and should be wound up.

The writer is a former head of Forest Force, Karnataka.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)