A Supreme Court directive will make it tougher for the State Government to facilitate the establishment of the proposed Coca Cola bottling plant at Chharba village in Dehradun district as the permission of Ministry of Environment and Forests is required for non-forestry use of land holding deemed forest.
The Forest Department conducted a survey in the area to ascertain the extent of tree plantation in the area and status of the land. Acting on a complaint from Citizens For Green Doon, the department surveyed the land earmarked for the bottling plant on Friday.
The letter pointed out to the divisional forest officer that under the Supreme Court judgement in “TN Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union Of India and others on December 3, 2010”, the land in question would come under the category of "deemed forests" and therefore under the Forest Conservation Act and thus permission of the MoEF would be needed to carry out any non-forest activity in the area.
Chharba Gram Pradhan Rumi Ram Jaiswal told The Pioneer that the sub divisional officer had surveyed the land and interviewed the villagers. “We have assured to provide him the land documents stating the khasra number and other details on Monday so that the status of the land can be ascertained,” he said. Jaiswal stressed that the villagers had themselves planted more than 50,000 trees since 1986, first under the UN water conservation scheme and then under the Government of India afforestation programme.
The Kalsi divisional forest officer Ram Gopal Verma said that presently the department had not received any written order stating the khasra numbers of the land plots which would be used for the proposed bottling plant so it would be premature to state whether the proposed land would be categorised as a deemed forest.