Mumbai: Bombay HC has pulled up the state govt for its “obstinacy” over assuming that as of Aug 30, 1975, private lands with forests automatically became private forests under Private Forests Act despite Supreme Court mandating in 2014 that proper procedure be first followed.Setting aside the state’s decision to declare lands belonging to a majority of 184 property owners as private forest lands under a 50-year-old law, thus restricting their development potential, a bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande said the case backlog was piling up due to govt’s “defiant approach” as it was still not ready to accept the law laid down by the highest court.The declaration of any land as ‘private forest’ renders it unusable for any non-forest activity. The Act allows acquisition of forests on private lands after deeming them as private forests in larger public interest. In 2014, SC ruled that Section 3 of the Act requires that a notice be first issued and a hearing conducted, and yet state officials held on to a “misconception” for over a decade that lands with forests were ‘private forests’ and lay vested with the state.Most of the plots of the 184 owners are in Shahpur, Ulhasnagar and Murbad in Thane district.Directing the state to scrutinise all cases still pending before it, HC said only after SC’s ruling is applied can the revenue department pass directions “to correct revenue entries by restoring the name of the landowners”.The state claimed it had rights over these lands but in most cases, HC found that the state had not complied with mandatory procedures before such lands could be termed ‘private forest’ and vested with govt.HC observed that it is high time that the state is “conscious of the fact that if a flaw lies at its end”, given no service as prescribed by law, on the owners and no notification published or its published without following the procedure, “there can be no declaration about any land to be ‘private forest’ and there is no question of the name of the state govt being mutated in the land records”.Justice Dangre, authoring the judgment of July 23 which was made available on Aug 1, said the state “repeatedly adopted the same stand” in 2014 and again when another judgment was delivered in a separate case in 2025. “We are surprised to note… the state continued with its obstinacy even today, which is reflected through the affidavits filed before us.”
