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Monday, Dec 17, 2007
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Monday, Dec 17, 2007 ePaper |
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Tamil Nadu
CHENNAI: A social responsibility is cast on every individual to prevent deforestation. The laudable and lucid laws enacted to preserve Nature must be strictly adhered to, lest the repercussions be serious, resulting in ecological imbalance, observed the Madras High Court. A Division Bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice S.R. Singharavelu made the observation while dismissing a writ appeal filed by the Nilgiris-based coffee estate owners, who challenged an important provision of the Tamil Nadu Preservation of Private Estates Act 1949. Through an amendment in 1979, the Government declared that the specified private forests would be ‘forests’ for the purpose of application of the Act. The amendment was aimed at “preserving the private forest wealth and to prevent indiscriminate destruction of private forest.” The present appeal was filed after a single Judge dismissed the petition filed by the estate owners. The petitioners contended that it was essential to remove shade trees once they got silviculturally mature. Otherwise, those trees would cause danger and havoc to coffee plantations, they said, adding that declaring them ‘forests’ was absolutely illegal. The authorities, however, stated that the Act was not prohibitory but was only preventive in nature. The petitioners could apply to competent authorities for permission to cut and remove the trees and there was absolutely no denial of any rights of the estate owners to carry out any improvement which would not denude the forests, they said. Rejecting the submission of the petitioners that they would be governed only by the Tamil Nadu Hill Area (Preservation of Trees) Act, which was a special legislation, and not the impugned Act, the Division Bench said: “From a comparative reading of the applicability causes in both the Act, it is clear that while the Tamil Nadu Preservation of Private Forests Act would apply to private forests having a contiguous area exceeding two hectares, the Hill Areas (Preservation of Trees) Act applies to all hill areas in the State. The petitioners’ lands are in a contiguous area of exceeding two hectares. Therefore, there is no bar on the Government in declaring such a contiguous area exceeding two hectares as private forest.” The Bench also pointed out that the Hill Act did not anywhere mention that it was in “supercession of any of the Acts in existence” particularly the Private Forests Act. “Therefore, the Hill Act would be an Act in addition, but not in derogation or in supercession or in exclusion of Act XXVII of 1949 so as to say that the Hill Act, being a Special Act, would have overriding effect on a general Act,” it said. Holding that there were no grounds to interfere with the single judge order, the Bench said the failure to preserve Nature would lead to all round destruction and chaos.
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