Kochi, June 12: A division bench of the Kerala High Court today granted four weeks' time to the state government to furnish the list of persons who were found to have encroached upon forest land after January 1, 1977 and those who had been evicted during the last one year. The directions were issued by the bench, comprising Chief Justice J L Gupta and Justice A K Basheer, on a public interest litigation by the Nature Lovers Movement, Thiruvamkulam, seeking to evict encroachers of forest land prior to January 1, 1977. Earlier, the government had filed a counter affidavit, undertaking to evict the encroachers. The petitioner complained that despite assurances given by the state, encroachment was continuing. However, when the matter was taken up today, the Additional Advocate-general Rajan Joseph submitted that the state had taken a policy decision to evict all encroachers. The government had earlier set apart about 70,000 acres of land to rehabilitate occupants of forest land prior to Jan 1, 1977. This was to prevent further encroachment in the forest land. Central government sanction was also obtained for this assignment. Later, a legislative committee, in its report, pointed out that thousands of hectares of forest land was still being occupied by the encroachers and only 1600 acres could be taken by the government from them, allegedly due to 'political interference'.

Bureau Report