Those encroaching illegally in Kalagadh in Corbett national park will be evicted and the 213 building units in the irrigation colony will be demolished. This was stated at a meeting between Uttarakhand Chief Secretary Shatrughna Singh and his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Deepak Singhal held at lucknow on Monday in observance of the order issued by the National Green Tribunal.
The Uttarakhand Chief Secretary sought `48 crore from Uttar Pradesh to facilitate rehabilitation of the illegal occupants who do not own any immovable assets. Regarding this, the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary said that a request will be submitted to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change seeking rehabilitation of the illegal occupants as was facilitated in the case of Maharashtra.
It is pertinent to mention here that for the construction of the Ramganga dam project, a total area of about 9,518.6 hectare was conditionally handed over to the UP irrigation department in four stages from 1958 to 1965.
According to the condition set, the land area left after construction of the dam was to be handed over back to the forest department. However, the UP irrigation department did not observe this condition though people and various organisations encroached upon this land.
The Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) then filed a public interest litigation in the High Court which decided to make the forest area in question free of encroachments.
As a result of the court’s decision, 344.49 hectare forest land was returned to the forest department. However, 31.78 hectare forest land has remained under encroachment. The case was then presented in the Central empowered committee which submitted its recommendations to the Supreme Court. At present, this case is in the National Green Tribunal. The tribunal had ordered the chief secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to ensure observance of the Supreme Court order.
The Uttarakhand Government sought consideration of various alternatives for removing the encroachment and transferring the forest land back to the forest department.
It was stated that Uttarakhand is a special category status State which is provided financial resources by the Government of India in 90:10 or 80:20 ratio. Citing the limited financial resources of the State, Uttarakhand was not stated to be capable of affording the rehabilitation package.
It was also stated that the encroachment on reserved forest land was a result of the negligence of the UP irrigation department, considering which Uttar Pradesh should bear the cost of rehabilitation.
It is also pertinent to mention here that as per the forest department survey data, there are 1,137 illegal occupants of which 173 are encroaching on more than one building. At present, out of the 964 illegal occupants, only 213 are eligible for rehabilitation. The remaining 751 occupants have not submitted affidavit about not having possession of immovable property in other places.