Land grab law: Western Ghats to lose last layer of protection

Activists warned that state govt's proposal to exempt rural areas from Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition Act will deal a death blow to Western Ghats

Activists warned that the state government’s proposal to exempt rural areas from the Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition Act will deal a death blow to Western Ghats forests, which have reported 77 per cent of all forest land encroachments in Karnataka.

As per the Forest Department data, 1.58 lakh acres of the 2.04 lakh acres of forest land under encroachment in the state are spread across eight districts in the Ghats region. Shivamogga leads the violations with the encroachment of 81,502.44 acres, followed by Chikkamagalur (30,641.11) and Uttara Kannada (28,335).

Department officials said though the Act and the special courts set up under it had not stopped all encroachments, a level of deterrence was observed in rural interiors when it came to forest encroachment.

The amendment bill tabled in the Assembly seeks to restrict the ambit of the Act to the limits of BBMP and city corporations. The government will also close all the land grabbing cases pending before special courts. The government is also in the process of regularising encroachments under Form 57.

In Uttara Kannada, Shivamogga and Chikkamagalur, 50,000 to 90,000 applications are pending before the district committees headed by MLAs. "In Uttara Kannada alone, 85,000 applications are pending. Many applicants do not qualify for regularisation but still put pressure," a source said.

Former environment secretary A N Yellappa Reddy said the government was handing over rich forests to land sharks on a platter.

"First, they reduced the extent of deemed forest land by 80 per cent. Lakhs of acres of Section 4 forest (intended reserve forests) have not been protected. On top of it, they want to remove the last bit of protection to help land grabbers get away. The disasters that we are experiencing due to climate change will only get worse," he said.

Sagar-based activist Akhilesh Chipli said the exemption, coupled with the rampant misuse of the Forest Rights Act, will remove the last bit of greenery from the eco-sensitive ghats.

"Government land means the commons belonging to the public. The commons in villages, like grazing land or soppina betta, are as important as the land in Jayanagar or Banashankari in Bengaluru. Only that their importance is not measured in market value," he said.

A deputy conservator of forest in one of the Ghats districts said the blanket exemption is a message to the foresters that their work was irrelevant.

"The last hope of protecting forest lands has crashed. Under the Karnataka Forest Act, the punishment for encroachment was only up to one year. Under the land grabbing Act, the special courts had power to award 3-year punishment and the cases were getting disposed of quickly compared with regular courts. There are instances where encroachers left the land before charges were framed. Now, one can expect more forest encroachments," he said.

Biodiversity Board former chairman Ananth Hegde Ashisar said the landslides in the Western Ghats were a stark reminder that the region was under pressure.

"The ghats are the source of our rains and rivers. Yet the governments have opposed the Centre’s notification on the eco-sensitive area. The amendment will remove the last layer of protection to the ghats," he said.