News: Constructions on Aravalli land in Raisina razed-17-02-2021
The Sohna municipal corporation on Wednesday carried out a demolition drive against at least 10 constructions on Aravalli land in Raisina village
The Sohna municipal corporation on Wednesday carried out a demolition drive against at least 10 constructions on Aravalli land in Raisina village. This was done in compliance with a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order from December 2020, which instructed that all such establishments built in the Aravallis of Gurugram and Faridabad be razed by January 31. A similar drive against unlawful structures in Manesar had been conducted on January 29 by the forest department.
Confirming the development, Karam Bir Malik, forest range officer, said, “Orders have been given by the court in two cases recently — one filed by plaintiff Sonia Ghosh and the other by Ram Avtar Yadav, the former sarpanch of the Manesar panchayat. In these cases, the NGT has been extremely clear that any illegal construction in Aravalli forests are to be removed. Demolitions in Sohna started early on Wednesday and will continue in the coming days.”
Unlike the demolition drive in Manesar, which was directly overseen by the forest department, Malik said that the Sohna municipal corporation would be leading the ones in Raisina village, as the land is not notified under sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (1900), which gives it legal forest status and puts it under the custodianship of the forest department.
Instead, the violations in Sohna are allegedly concentrated in Aravalli Retreat, a 1,200-acre complex comprising 670 privately held plots, which, until recently, were noted under the land use category of “gair mumkin farmhouse” in revenue records. The demolitions come more than six months after the Municipal Corporation of Sohna served show cause notices to over 400 farmhouses in Aravalli Retreat, on grounds that they had been constructed in violation of the MoEFCC’s notification of June 6, 2020.
Following instructions laid down by the green court, the Gurugram deputy commissioner on June 11 last year ordered that the land use category of gair mumkin farmhouse be struck from revenue records and replaced with ‘gair mumkin pahad’ — the original nomenclature. Experts and environmentalists explained that the gair mumkin farmhouse category was introduced in revenue records around 1991, and has been used, over the years, by private developers to circumvent the MoEFCC’s Aravalli Notification.
“There is no such term in revenue records historically. Its sudden emergence around 1991, just before the Aravalli Notification was to come into force, raises questions as to who allowed these changes to be introduced in the record books, and why,” said Sarvadaman Oberoi, a city-based legal activist.
The validity of gair mumkin farmhouse as a revenue term has been previously struck down by the Punjab and Haryana high court. In a 2014 judgment, the court observed, “Concededly, the developers have got changed the kind of land from gairmumkin mountain (pahad) to gairmumkin farmhouses. If any patwari without any legal authority had made the stray entries... then such stray and illegal entries are non est, void and are not sufficient to hold that the land in litigation was gairmumkin farmhouses.” The court also said that these lands will continue to be recognised as pahad, and not as “farmhouse”.
Further, in October 2018, in the case of Soniya Ghosh v/s State of Haryana, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ruled that, “Any construction raised on the forest area or the area otherwise covered by the notification dated 07.05.1992 without permission of the competent authority (after the date of the said notification) has to be treated as illegal and such forest land has to be restored (sic).”
As per a recent forest department survey, there are at least 100 such farmhouses built illegally on Aravalli land in Gurugram, concentrated in areas like Gwal Pahari, Gairatpur Bas, Sohna and Manesar.
District forest officer, RS Dhull, did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
