New Delhi: The Haryana government lately amended a law that could threaten prominent elements of Aravalli hills and impact the fitness of hundreds of thousands residing within the location. Now, the ones voicing these fears seem to be dealing with the wrath of the BJP-led kingdom government. The kingdom on Sunday issued switch and posting orders for senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka, just hours after he raised worries approximately the difficulty, Indian Express reported. In his interaction with the daily, Khemka had said that the government’s modification to the Punjab Land Act – as a way to open up vast tracts of the Aravalli hills to infrastructure development and wooded area diversion – “will gasoline the greed of land sharks.”
Khemka had raised issues that the state’s decision – which chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had called the “need of the hour” – might wreck the hills and forests of the Aravallis in the call of consolidation. “Consolidation court cases inside the eco-fragile quarter of the Aravalli will now not growth agricultural productivity, but gas the greed of land sharks,” he turned into quoted as pronouncing. “Big personal hobbies will take over not unusual assets resources and damage the already fragile surroundings of the NCR.”
The fifty three-12 months-vintage officer, currently the principal secretary, Haryana Sports and Youth Affairs Department, has been transferred to the Science and Technology Department. The switch order, issued using chief secretary D.S. This does no longer lists any motive for doing so. This could be Khemka’s 6th switch since the current BJP government came to Haryana in 2014.
The amendment
On February 27, the Haryana government handed a change to the Punjab Land and Preservation Act (PLPA) – drafted by the British in 1900. The regulation provides prison safety to forests and bushes on network lands, panchayat and municipal lands, and private lands and communal lands. According to the Haryana forest department, the Act is supposed to provide “higher preservation and protection in certain areas in 10 districts of Haryana”. Defending the amendment in the assembly, the chief minister said that “due to the fast urbanization, maximum of the regions have been advanced across the Aravalli.” Thus, “We must also take cognizance of the way this improvement additionally has to co-exist.”
The threat to the Aravalli
The percentage of the nation’s forests compared to its total geographical region is the bottom inside u . S. A. With the brand new modification, experts and environmentalists fear, this restricted land, especially the Aravalli hills, will become handy for mining, production, and urbanization.
They say this could bring about” irreversible harm to local ecology,” Mayank Aggarwal mentioned in Mongabay. The restrained forest cowl there is “will be opened for the real estate region, and there can be no inexperienced barrier left for tens of millions of human beings residing in Delhi and Gurugram,” forest professional Chetan Agarwal instructed Mongabay.
According to him, in the country, the PLPA’s unique-village smart notifications had been used to defend non-agricultural forested lands within the Shiwaliks and Aravalli. With the protection of the PLPA’s different notifications gone, all production and building licenses which can be currently unlawful get legalized. This, he fears, will possibly bring about a frenzy of tree slicing and production in the Aravalli hills. “The provisions of this Act seem to contradict the guidelines of several Supreme Court orders in the Godavarman and M.C. Mehta instances,” Agarwal delivered.
The actual estate issue
The chief minister, on his component, has rubbished allegations that the amendment has been made and passed hurriedly below stress from the builder lobby. Environmentalists, however, say the authorities have decided without thinking about conservation because it presents an opportunity for indiscriminate real estate improvement. According to Mongabay, they sense the modifications will, in essence, lead to repealing of the old regulation.
