Ooty: Greens root for survey of revenue lands near jungles

Ooty: Green activists here have urged the Nilgiris district administration to hold a survey of the revenue lands in and around the jungles across the hills to remove all encroachments in the revenue lands in the wooded zones.

Making this appeal, Mr B. K. Kumaran, president of the Nilgiris Ecology and Animals Protection Samithi, said that thousands of acres in Vazhaithottam, Chokkanalli, Mavanallah, Bokkapuram  and Masinagudi village limits in  Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) fringes are allegedly under encroachment.

“While few buildings were constructed in the past in the encroached lands in the aforesaid areas, most of the encroached revenue lands there are being used for agriculture purpose by the encroachers. These revenue lands are learnt to be under the joint-registry category, meaning that both the forest or revenue administration are claiming rights for these lands.  However, since survey was not properly done to demarcate between forest land and revenue land, these lands have almost become ‘no-man’s land’ leading to encroachment over the decades.   

Necessary actions should be initiated immediately to evict all the encroachments in these lands to hand it over to the Forest department to commence afforestation programme there,” he suggested.

Likewise, taluk-level panels should be formed to inspect the identify encroachments along the forest fringes in the interior hamlets across the Nilgiris to retrieve the encroached lands, he added.