Long way to go

The reports confirming that nearly 20,000 hectares of forests continue to remain under encroachment across the Union Territory despite the High Court’s directions to remove the illegal occupants over five years back, one can say that there is a long way to go to accomplish the aforesaid job. It is intriguing that despite standing directions by the High Court the authorities have failed to comply which clearly means that there are certain bottlenecks which are stopping the concerned quarters from taking the appropriate action. No doubt this is a major challenge before the concerned authorities but it is also not justifiable to allow the encroachers to continue with their illegal action of occupying government land without any validity or right.  Considering the importance of forests in a region like J&K, it becomes imperative to safeguard every inch of these patches because   the green cover is vital for having environmental balance. Trees in abundance help in controlling pollution, protecting wildlife, and providing fresh air and water besides ensuring timely rains and other climatic conditions. Uncontrolled encroachment on forest land can dent nature and create undue hardships for the upcoming generations. It is therefore the duty of the incumbent government to safeguard forests as far as possible and to start with, retrieving the encroached forest lands should be the things of paramount importance.  The government must take this issue seriously and act with utter swiftness to restore the lands which are lawfully the property of these patches and are under illegal occupation of land mafia and other wrongful dwellers.  Of course the path to retrieve these lands from the encroachers is not easy but there is no other way out and therefore treading on this arduous path is the only solution to get back the entire forest land from the illegal occupiers.    It is pertinent to mention that the Division Bench of the High Court of J&K, vide order dated September 3, 2020 in Public Interest Litigation (PIL) No. 25/2017 titled SAVE Vs J&K & Others, had categorically directed the Forest Department to remove encroachments from forest land in a time-bound manner and also ordered the constitution of high-level committees to achieve the desired objectives. The Government has already constituted a Union Territory-Level Monitoring Committee and District-Level Committees to monitor the progress of demarcation of forest boundaries and installation of boundary pillars but still there are various tasks to be completed to get back the encroached land. The government must take this issue seriously and act without further delay. The public should also cooperate in this endeavour by reporting all attempts to further encroach the forest land and identifying the persons involved in this wrongdoing.