NEW DELHI, April 22 — The nightmare of eviction drives on the forest land in the State may come back to haunt Assam Government, with the Union Environment and Forest Ministry putting its foot down on encroachment of forestland, even as the State’s is ranked eighth in the country in term of forest cover, which was estimated at 35.33 per cent. With the Supreme Court keeping a close watch on the issue, Union Environment and Forest Minister, TR Baalu today clarified that eviction drives to remove the unlawful people away from the forest land has to continue. The Minister, however, added that whatever promises the respective State Government have made to its people prior to 1980 would be conceded.
In other words, settlements in forestland allowed by the State Government prior to 1980 would not be disturbed. But any settlements on the forest land after that cut-off year would have to be evicted. The policy is in line with the stand taken by Assam Government, which too has pleaded that pre-1980 settlements in the forestland should not be disturbed. They argued that settlers were mostly tribal people and those affected by floods and erosion. But the Minister had strong warning for the States asserting that the Central Government has not promised anything on this to the States and would not allow dilution of the forestland under the Forest Conservation Act.
An encouraging development, Sri Baalu said was the stand taken by Congress president, Sonia Gandhi who has asked all the Congress-ruled States not to dilute the forest cover. Officials said that the Congress chief was under tremendous pressures from her own State Chief Ministers to allow a halt on the eviction drives. But she has struck to her gun on this so far, officials added. About the state of forest in the North-East, officials said though they are not satisfied what is encouraging is that the degradation of the forest in the region has been arrested, Arunachal Pradesh with 68,045 km at one point of time had the largest forest cover in the country. But the position has now been taken by Madhya Pradesh (77,265 km).
Officials said that Assam like many other States attempted to hide the actual position vis-a-vis encroachments on forestland, but the Ministry of Environment and Forest hired a Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) satellite to take a close look. A lot of startling things came out following which separate batches of teams were dispatched to the States. In all, 13 lakh hectares of forest and all-over the country was discovered to be under encroachments. In Assam officials said maximum area of the forestland were under encroachment of illegal migrants and the State Government has been told to drive them out in the larger national interest.
But the Ministry is satisfied with the joint forest management schemes adopted by various States including Assam to increase the forest cover. Significantly Meghalaya is the only State in the country, which has declined to adopt a joint forest management scheme. Meghalaya has been asked to review its stand and if it fails funds for forest area development would be withhold by the Centre, sources said. The Minister, who released the State of Forest Report 2001, eight in its series, however, ducked questions on the extent of encroachments on forestland, saying that the survey conducted by Dehra Dun based Forest Survey of India was to ascertain the forest cover and not encroachments.
For the first time, forest cover mapping of the entire country has been done at 1:50,000 scale by digital method. Large-scale mapping using digital technique allowed inclusion of all forest an tree canopy patches down to 1 hectare size as against the earlier limit of 25 ha. This led to new baseline information on forest cover, the Minister said. According to the latest assessment, forest cover of the country has gone up to 675,538 km or 20 per cent of the geographical area of the country as against 637,293 km or 19.39 per cent assessed in 1999. This means an increase of 38,245 km more in absolute term, which is six percent higher, he claimed.
The Central Government has targeted to achieve a forest cover of 25 per cent by 2007 and 33 per cent by 2012. Assessment of forest cover at district level reveals that out of 589 districts, 199 districts have less then five percent of the geographical area under forest cover, including 59 districts that have less than one percent forest cover.
Meanwhile, Assam forest and free cover is estimated to be 37.81 per cent. Out of its total geographical area of 78,438 km, it has a recorded forest area of 27,018 km, which is about 34.45 per cent. Its forest area is 27,714 km, which is 35.33 per cent. According to the State of Forest Report 2001, Morigaon and Dhemaji districts with 6.10 per cent and 7.20 per cent respectively have the lowest forest cover in the State. Karbi Anglong with 76.40 per cent along with Cachar (54.12 per cent) and Hailakandi (50.94 per cent) district have high forest cover in the State. Mizoram with 82.98 per cent and Arunachal Pradesh with 81.25 per cent in the North-East have the highest forest cover in the region. Assam in fact has the lowest forest cover in the region.