Farmer gets back land after 43-yr court battle

RULING Forest department had notified his land under archaic law

NEW DELHI/DEHRADUN It took 43 years for Lokmani Sharma to get back his agricultural land wrongly notified as forest land by the state government. A long battle in courts and being arrested for encroaching government land was part of that battle.

His fight ended this month when an environment ministry committee vested the land back to him.

Sharma, now 58, says he has spent his life’s earning in fighting the case in courts — from local to the Supreme Court — despite having land records showing that 2.27 hectares of agriculture land was leased to his father by a former zamindar Udham Singh Nagar, about 200 kms east of Dehradun, more than half a century ago.

In revenue records, the land was in Sharma’s name as Bhumidar (one who has land possession) with transferable rights.

The state forest department, however, took to the colonial Indian Forest Act of 1927 to notify his agriculture land in 1974 as forest saying there were “full-grown” trees on the land, which Sharma claimed was plantation done by him.

The forest department was not willing to listen to him and declared his land as reserve forest turning him into an encroacher on his own land. He was arrested in 1988. "I was arrested but also received bail immediately,” Sharma told HT.

Sharma challenged the notification in local court which upheld his claim but the forest department appealed at every level till the Supreme Court rejected its plea.

The apparent reason for dragging the case was that admitting its mistake would have meant holding its own personnel guilty of wrong-doing, a probable reason for the government being the biggest litigant in the country.

The government is litigant in around half of the 30 million pending court cases in India, a reason for delay in delivery of justice. In 2010, justice VV Rao of Andhra Pradesh high court had said that it would take 320 years for the Indian judiciary to clear the pending cases.

“I am not a rich man who has properties and white collar job. I had only that piece of land on which I was dependent," he asked. Sharma and many others may not have to suffer at the hands of the forest department as the ministry now plans to curb such “absolute” powers what came with a law that the British used to control forest land for running a highly profitable timber business.

“We have constituted a committee to remove colonial legacy of the forest law and revamp it in tune with modern India,” said an environment ministry official.

Sharma got his land back after the environment ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) earlier this month decided to de-notify the 2.47 hectares of land.

As per law, while state governments can notify any land as reserve forest, de-notification can be done only by the Centre.