In a relief to more than 5.5 lakh residents who faced the threat of losing their homes, the Supreme Court on Thursday quashed all prior notices and orders regarding encroached forest land in various areas bordering the sprawling Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai. The SC judgment said: “A tertiary question that arises is that assuming the disputed lands are forest lands, can the state be allowed to demolish the massive constructions made thereon over the last half a century?” advocate Girija Balakrishnan who represented Hillside Residents Welfare Association (Hirwa) told dna: “The court came down heavily on the Maharashtra government for bad administration. It said it is unfair that buyers or residents have to bear the brunt when the state showed no intention of taking over the land in the past several years.” This SC order can possibly be put to use by other housing societies which have been declared illegal due to various reasons, including the Campa Cola Society of which some illegal floors are about to be demolished. The time factor could prove to be helpful in such cases since the SC questioned the right of the state to “demolish constructions made over the last half century.” The long-standing issue about the constructions around the National Park cropped up in 2001 when a PIL was filed by NGO Bombay Environmental Action Group to update the state’s land records as per the Maharashtra Private Forests (MPF) Act, 1975, which included land designated as residential areas until then. In 2008, the Bombay high court dismissed petitions filed by various residents and developers against the forest status and notified the land as per the MPF Act, 1975. The residents, developers and land owners challenged the high court order in the SC. The apex court directed the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to look into the matter and file its recommendations. The CEC recommended that the house owners pay nominal afforestation fees ranging between Rs6 and Rs120 per sq ft and get their homes regularised. After almost a decade, the SC removed the forest tag given to the area. “The old notices are not valid as there are no records of these anywhere. The municipal corporation development plans of 1967 and 1991 show this land is not forest land, but residential land, as the judgment reiterates. So many government organistions and municipal offices exist on this land, including the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. How does it make any sense?” asks Prakash Padikkal, president of HIRWA. “After fighting for more than seven years, we can heave a sigh of relief.” Among the over 10,000 residents who had booked flats is 60-year-old businessman Unni Kakkat. “I booked a flat at Aristo Heaven in Mulund more than seven years ago and six months before the high court order. I put all my savings there as I was assured that I would get possession by March 2009. It is 2014 now and we have been living in tension all these years. Finally, we got some positive news,” said Kakkat. Lax monitoring of forest land The Supreme Court judgment gives relief to 5.5 lakh residents living in the disputed areas bordering the National Park. Mulund itself consists of more than 110 societies that came under the disputed land whereas there are 75,000 flats in Goregaon, Thane, Kandivli, Borivli and Ghodbunder areas. Despite the SC judgment, there have been several encroachments on the fringes of SGNP in the past decade due to lax monitoring of forest boundaries by the state.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:35:30 +0000
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