Illegal forest land claims: SC says UP govt sleeping for 26 years

The Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the Uttar Pradesh government and said it was "sleeping" for the past 26 years on the illegal settlement of claims in favour of industries and third parties in the reserved forest areas of Mirzapur district.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, M R Shah and B R Gavai refused to pass any ex-parte orders on quashing of such claims and said there might be thousands of crores of rupees invested by the industries in these areas.

The state government said it wanted quashing of all such illegal claims settled by forest settlement officer after the cut-off date of July 18, 1994, fixed by the apex court.

"This has been going on since 1994 and now after 26 years you have come. You were sleeping for 26 years and now you are asking us to remove everyone," the court said.

"What were you doing all these years? Do you not have any disciplinary control over these forest officers?" it asked.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Uttar Pradesh government, said the apex court had in 1986 fixed the cut-off date of July 18, 1994, for settlement of claims but these were going on till date.

In some instances, Mehta said, claims were settled in favour of people who were not even the residents of the state and, in some cases, claims were entertained and settled for the piece of land, for which the claim was already settled.

Mehta said these claims were adjudicated contrary to the apex court's 1994 order, in which it had said that no third party or industry could be allotted land in these reserved forest areas. He said there may be over 1,100 beneficiaries of such claims, including some public sector units.

The bench sought the list of all those people and establishments, including industries in whose favour the claims were settled, by next week.

"We cannot pass ex-parte orders. Before we declare the allotment as void, we would like to hear them," the bench said. "There are NTPC, UP state electricity board and others. We cannot simply remove them who are there for over 20 years."