In compliance with a February 19, 2024, Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded the State Expert Committee (SEC) reports on its website earlier in April. This interim order was in response to a public interest litigation challenging the constitutionality of the Forest (Conservation) Act Amendment (FCAA) 2023. A key concern in the petition was that the status of unclassed forests, which were to be identified by the state SEC reports, wasn’t known or if they had been identified at all.
With the enactment of FCAA, these unclassed forests — which have legal protection under the landmark case T.N. Godavarman Thirumalpad (1996) — would lose this protection, leading to their inevitable diversion. The SEC reports were to be prepared in pursuance of the order, which specified that ‘forests’ as per their dictionary meaning and all categories of forests irrespective of ownership and notification status would be included under the ambit of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980. As a result, unclassed forests, a.k.a. deemed forests, would also require the Central government approval in case a project proponent sought to divert that land for non-forest use, after multiple other layers scrutiny.
Unclassed or deemed forests may belong to forests, revenue, railways and other government entities, community forests or those under private ownership, but are not notified. SECs were to identify all such forests across the country through available records i.e. Forest Working Plans, Revenue land records, etc., and by physical identification of any land patch having the nature of forests as per dictionary meaning regardless of its ownership.
