The Bombay High Court on Monday directed the state authorities, which are responsible to identify mangroves and transfer such areas to the forest department and provide timelines for the same exercise, to inform it about the compliance of such a decision taken on June 26, 2021 in a meeting attended by several senior government officials.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice V G Bisht was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed last year by NGO Vanashakti, which claimed “willful negligence” by the authorities to facilitate misuse of large stretches of mangrove land for “vested interests” and sought to transfer nearly 1,600 hectares of such land to the forest department.
The PIL claimed that the authorities did not comply with the high court’s September 2018 order wherein it had directed all mangrove areas to be declared forests and transferred to the forest department. The NGO had claimed that while nearly 15,311.7 hectares of mangrove land came under the 2018 order’s ambit, a total of 13,716.73 hectares were transferred to the revenue and forest department.
Last year, the Maharashtra government in its affidavit had said that it was complying with the 2018 order and 14,299.64 Hectares of mangrove area was already handed over to the forest department.
On Monday, advocate Zaman Ali for the petitioner NGO referred to the minutes of the meeting dated July 26, 2021, attended by several senior state government officials of forest and urban development departments, mangrove cell, officials of the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC), Bhiwandi Nizampur Municipal Corporation (BNMC) and so on.
Advocate Ali submitted that no steps were taken by the divisional commissioner, Konkan and other authorities as decided in the agenda mentioned in the minutes of the said meeting.
Additional government pleader Manish M Pable for the state government, on oral instructions from the Konkan divisional commissioner, said that several measures have been taken in pursuance of the concerned meeting and that a further meeting of the said officials was held in the recent past.
However, as the copy of the minutes of the recent meeting was not made available, Pable sought time to submit the same, which the court allowed.
The court, which will hear the PIL next on February 14, directed the authorities responsible for acting as per the July 26 meeting to file separate affidavits by February 10, indicating the extent of compliance of the exercise of identifying mangroves and subsequent transfer of mangrove areas to the forest department.