Drive to raze 600 structures in Aravalis to start in a week

GURUGRAM: An exercise to demolish around 600 structures built illegally in the ecosensitive Aravalis will start within a week in Faridabad. On Wednesday, the district magistrate
appointed a duty magistrate to oversee the work.
“I, Vikram, IAS, district magistrate, Faridabad, do hereby appoint Renuka, DTP, Faridabad as
duty magistrate for maintaining of law and order upon the request of conservator of forest,
Faridabad during the removal of encroachment on forest land of village Mewla Maharajpur and
Ankhir on January 4 to till completion of the work,” the order reads.
A total of 600 structures have been identified in Ankhir and Mewla Maharajpur villages. A ground
truthing – an exercise to verify data collected through aerial photography or satellite images – of
the illegal structures has already been done.
“Yes, a duty magistrate was appointed today (Wednesday). The demolitions will start in the next
seven days,” said Raj Kumar, the divisional forest officer.
Land in the two villages comes under sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation
Act (PLPA), as well as Section 4 (special orders) of the law. In June last year, the Supreme
Court had directed that land notified under special orders must be treated as ‘forests’ in line with
provisions of the Forest Conservation Act.
Following the order, 71 notices were issued to owners in October and November, and they were
given 15 days’ time to bring down their structures on their own. Officials said most of these
structures were small farmhouses and a few boundary walls. All of these were identified with the
help of drone mapping.
The SC judgment — in the Narinder Singh vs Divesh Bhutani case — was based on appeals
filed by property owners against a 2013 order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which had
restrained any non-forest activity on PLPA-notified land in Anangpur village. Another appeal that
was clubbed with the case was a petition against a notice to remove illegal farmhouses and
banquet halls on forest land in Anangpur, Ankhir and Mewla Maharajpur
The PLPA, enacted in 1990 to preserve land from erosion, is currently applicable across 10
districts of Haryana – Panchkula, Ambala, Yamuna Nagar, Nuh, Gurgaon, Palwal, Faridabad,
Mahandergarh, Rewari and Bhiwani.