Kerala   

Law on fragile land getting delayed

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The promulgation of the proposed Kerala Forest (Vesting and Management of Ecologically Fragile Lands) Amendment Ordinance is getting delayed due to differences in the Left Democratic Front (LDF) on its provisions.

The ordinance was proposed to facilitate return of land taken over by the government from small farmers under the parent legislation and address issues that had arisen in respect of the notification of certain areas such as the Merchiston estate as environmentally fragile area.

The LDF State committee, which considered the draft ordinance last month, was not satisfied with the provisions. It wanted incorporation of stronger provisions for protection of the land of small farmers from takeover. Subsequently, senior officials of the Forest Department met to redraft the ordinance and remove practical problems that may arise in the implementation of the amended provisions.

The government’s plan is to return up to five hectares of land that was in the possession of settlers at the time of the notification of the area as environmentally fragile. However, a special provision is proposed for the Nilgiri and Agastyamalai biosphere reserves. (The Merchiston estate area falls under the Agastyamalai Biosphere Reserve.) The draft amendment says any land within the Nilgiri and Agastyar biospheres declared to be an ecologically fragile land by the government by notification in the Gazette would come under the definition of ‘ecologically fragile lands.’ The government can declare any area functioning as connecting corridors or wildlife habitats or playing a pivotal role in conserving water resources in biosphere reserves as ecologically fragile and take over the land.

Petitions against the takeover of the land by the owner or the person having the right of possession and enjoyment of such land will be scrutinised by the Collector, divisional forest officer and secretary to the local self-government institutions of the area. Patches of land in some settlement areas had been taken over under the Ordinance of 2001 on the ground that they were encroached, on environmentally fragile forest areas. As the government policy is to allow farmers who had encroached upon forests prior to 1977, this action had been contested by farmers. Some areas notified had lost the status of forests in a practical sense. When the Ordinance was replaced by an Act in 2003, the then government had incorporated a provision exempting land used principally for the cultivation of crops of long duration such as tea, coffee, rubber, pepper, cardamom, coconut, areca nut and cashew and sites of residential buildings and appurtenances. The draft ordinance retains coffee or cardamom and drops tea and other crops.

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