Javadekar to carry out aerial survey of Aravalli hills in Haryana today

His final legal definition of forests to decide the fate of real estate and mining in the hills

Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar is set to survey the Aravalli forests in Haryana on Monday along with state forest minister Rao Narbir Singh. This could lead to an early finalisation of the definition of forest for application of the forest laws.

The state government, sources in the state forest department confirmed, were unhappy with the drafted forest definition, which could lock out real estate and mining from large part of the Aravalli forest areas.

Business Standard had earlier reported that the environment ministry had revised the draft definition of forests after once preparing it in 2014 Environment ministry defines forests, legally.

Forming a legal definition of forests became essential after a Supreme Court verdict in 1996 noted the lack of such a definition and large swathes of green areas were not found to be not part of recorded forest areas, according to government records. But states refused to delineate forests according to the dictionary definition that the court asked. This, and subsequent apex court orders, forced the Centre to come up with a definition.

In sparsely green states such as Haryana, the new draft definition required that besides areas already recorded as forestlands on revenue records, all areas with a canopy cover of more than 10 per cent be declared as forests. The strict forest laws would then apply on these areas as well, preventing easy mining or development of real estate. Under forest laws, clearance is mandatory before forest lands can be used for other purposes.

Specifically impacting Haryana, the definition also encompassed gair mumkin pahar areas, a land classification in the state that also has green cover in the Aravalli hills.

"There is a view that the 10% minimum forest cover criteria should be relaxed to 30% and the gair mumkin pahar areas too should be out of the ambit of forest lands," said a senior state forest official. 

The principle secretary forests Harayana, Amit Jha did not reply to the specific question of Haryana's wish for a weaker definition when queried by Business Standard. Speaking on javadekar's aerial survey said, "Let's see what happens tomorrow. We should talk about it after that." 

Documents show that Harayana state government, since the previous Congress government in power, has been pushing for a more relaxed forest regime, which would help it open up more areas to real estate and mining in the eight districts where Aravalli hills spread.

While the definition had been drafted with the in-principle approval of the environment minister, the final order for the definition had been pending approval yet again from the minister.  Javadekar had earlier told Business Standard, " I have approved a good note and stand for them (the ministry officials who prepared the draft). There are some issues but we shall protect all forests. This is not final as yet. But we will not reduce any forest areas." 

The current definition itself is a dilution from the previous version which was developed in 2014 by the ministry in consultation with the states and shared with all of them. In that definition even shrub forests (below a 10% forest density) were to be brought under the ambit of forest laws in states with low green cover, such as Haryana. This was to be done if the scrub forests were contiguous with other forest lands. 

In the previous definition the low cut off applied to states which had a forest cover below one-third of the geographical land. In the new definition this would not applied even if the state forest cover is below one-third but the cadastral survey has been completed in the entire state - an additional condition.

In the new definition the minimum patch size to be scrutinised for inclusion in the forest definition has been kept at 5 hectares. This minimum size criteria did not exist before. Forest Survey of India is able to map much smaller sizes plots. 

The new definition also refers specifically to verification against revenue records and not all kind of government land records such as forest maps. Across the country many cases have come to courts with both villagers and industries stuck in the ambiguity of what constitutes forests in India and which lands do not attract the forest laws' provisions.