Founder-president of Samaj Parivartana Samudaya S.R. Hiremath has urged the State government through the Additional Chief Secretary of Department of Forest, Environment and Ecology to take action against erring forest officials who had failed to recover encroached forest land in Koppa Forest Division of Chikkamagaluru Circle.
Addressing presspersons here recently, Mr. Hiremath said that through a letter on October 17, the samudaya had urged Additional Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar to depute a team from headquarters for a thorough study of encroachments of 5,185 acres of land by 87 persons and entities in Chikkamagaluru Circle based on the submission of the samudaya in the High Court of Karnataka in a writ petition (No. 1511-14 of 2013).
Mr. Hiremath said that despite directions by senior bureaucrats, forest officials had failed to recover the forest land encroached upon by different persons and entities and some of the “influential” encroachers had been left out while filing Forest Offence Cases.
“During our visit to Koppa Forest Division, we found that Shaban Ramzan Halasoor Estate, Halasoor Village, Balehonnur Forest Range, has encroached upon 122.17 acres of land.
And despite having confirmation on the encroachment of the forest land, the Assistant Conservator of Forest of the Range neither asked the RFO to file a case nor conducted 64(A) proceedings under Karnataka Forest Conservation Act 1963 against the encroachers,” Mr. Hiremath said.
He said that what was shocking was that instead of taking action as per law and as directed by his higher-ups, only a notice had been served on Shaban Ramzan Halasoor Estate. In fact, the DCF and CCF had used a misleading name [i.e., Mrs. Shobana Ranjan] to refer to the firm.
Mr. Hiremath said that the forest officials were treating the “privileged offenders” differently as they had political connections. And instead of taking immediate action, they were seeking legal opinion to act against such “privileged offenders”, which should be rectified immediately, he said.
