HUDA burnt fingers in plundering forest land: CAG

Sanjeev Kochhar / TNN / Mar 19, 2006, 02:41 IST

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When non-profit making govt agencies start emulating forest land, that indeed is shocking.

HUDA burnt fingers in plundering forest land: CAG

CHANDIGARH: Land sharks trying to plunder reserved forest land for commercial exploitation is understandable. But when supposedly non-profit making government agencies start emulating them, that indeed is shocking.
The latest report of Comptroller and Auditor General of India on the Haryana government has pointed out two such glaring instances in Faridabad and Gurgaon in which erring officials locked up nearly Rs 63 crore in developing new sectors and construction of roads by acquiring land under reserved forest, without prior approval of the central government as provided for in the Forest Conservation Act.
The report said that on checking the records of land acquisition collector and executive engineer of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) Project Division I, Faridabad, it came to light that for developing Sectors 44 and 47 of Faridabad, a notification under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act was issued in September 1992 for acquiring 483.69 acres in Mewla Maharaj Pur village, which comes under the Aravali hill ranges and was declared a reserved forest in August 1992.
Despite the Faridabad district town planner's plea to the forest department for denotification of the land in June 1993 being turned down (because of there being no such provision in the Act), another notification under Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act was issued in September 1993, and following announcement of the award in February 1995, development activities were carried out on the land.

The report said an expenditure of Rs 62.37 crore (Rs 55.51 crore on land acquisition and Rs 6.86 crore on development) was incurred during the period 2001-05.
But in March 2004, the Supreme Court, acting on a PIL filed in 2002, upheld the status of the land as reserved forest. This forced the Faridbad divisional forest officer to issue a notice to HUDA and Faridabad district town planner in March 2005 to get the construction activities stopped.

In the other case, the construction work of 60-metre wide outer roads of Sectors 26 and 26-A in Gurgaon, allotted to a contractor by HUDA in October 2004, was stopped following repeated intervention of the Gurgaon divisional forest officer, who pleaded that the land on which the roads were being constructed fell in a reserved forest.
He had first objected to the construction, being undertaken without the approval of the Government of India, in November 2003 but despite that HUDA continued with the work.
It was only in February 2005, when he again wrote to HUDA threatening action against it, that the work was stopped. But by then Rs 47.37 lakh had been incurred on the project, which now stands blocked, says the CAG report for the year ending March 31, 2005.

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