Jammu: Jammu and Kashmir government Tuesday
said that 14,359 hectares of forest land has been encroached
upon in the state.
Replying to a question of Basharat Ahmed Bukhari
during the Question Hour in Legislative Assembly, Minister for
Forest, Environment and Ecology Mian Altaf said that 14,359
hectares of forest land is under encroachment in the state.
He said the forest land under encroachment in Kashmir
and Jammu regions is 4,877 hectares and 9,482 hectares
respectively.
"Whenever any incident of encroachment is reported,
all possible steps are taken to retrieve forest land and
cases are lodged against the culprits," he said.
Besides, special drives are regularly carried out to
get the encroached land evicted, he said.
64 hectares of forest land in Jammu and 944 hectares
in Kashmir have been retrieved from the encroacher's, he said.
Besides this, 65 attempts on encroachments on about
286 hectares of forest land in Jammu were foiled from 2005 to
this time, he said.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, March 08, 2011, 16:11