Why has the ministry of environment turned a blind eye to thousands of hectares of forest land being taken over by the builder lobby in the outskirts of Thane, including the Kalwa-Mumbra area where the recent building collapse has seen 74 dead?
The problem is that granting sanction of less than 30 hectares of forest land lies with the forest officials at the state level. Most sanctions at the state level are being sought for very small plots of forest land varying between two to three hectares. But since these sanctions take time in coming through, the modus operandi of the builder lobby has been to illegally occupy the land and start construction work. The sanctions, if ever, will come in much later. The Thane Municipal Corporation has placed the onus of responsibility on the forest department and there is no doubt that Maharashtra’s forest minister Patangrao Kadam has much to answer for especially as to why huge swathes of mangrove forest have been chopped down to make way for fly-by-night constructions.
The Thane Municipal Corporation has squarely blamed the illegal constructions coming up in this area on the forest department pointing out that they had sent two notices in October and November 2012 asking them to stop these encroachments. The problem is that this is an extremely crime-prone area whose population has swollen from a few thousand in 93 to nine lakhs.
When contacted, senior bureaucrats in the environment ministry insisted that this was a “state-level subject and all questions must be directed to forest officials in the Thane circle”.
Debi Goenka, who heads the NGO, pointed out, “It’s a complex problem. Following the Mumbai 93 riots, a sizeable chunk of Muslim population shifted here. There have been periodic attempts to stop this encroachment but so far they have met with little success.”