5.5 Thousand Acres of Forest Land Recovered in 11 Months

In the last 11 months, 5,639.13 acres of land of the forest department has been recovered. 

The information was given at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change held at the Parliament House on Monday (August 23).

The Forest Department has announced plans to reclaim 10,000 acres and 20,000 acres of land in the next two years.

However, the committee expressed satisfaction with the rescue operation, but has suggested increasing the number from 20,000 acres to 50,000 acres in the two-year rescue plan.

In this regard, the chairman of the committee Saber Hossain Chowdhury said, the parliamentary committee has started the work of rescuing the land occupied by the forest department. Since October last year, they have recovered about 5,000 acres of land. Besides, they have reforested the recovered land. That is why we are satisfied. However, they have given us an action plan to rescue 20,000 acres in the next two years. We have asked for at least 50,000 acres.

It is known that the total evicted land of the forest department is 2 lakh 57 thousand 158.84 acres. Of these, 1,721.89 acres of established industrial establishments/factories with permanent establishment; Other institutions (hats, shops, resorts/cottages, agricultural farms, educational institutions, etc.) 13 thousand 435.19 acres; Houses, dwellings 1 lakh 8 thousand 457.89 acres and without permanent establishments (agricultural land, grazing land, garden, salt cultivation, fallow land etc.) 1 lakh 33 thousand 543.87 acres.

The committee was informed by the ministry that at present there are 13 eviction cases of the district administration, 852 civil cases in the lower court, 112 writs in the high court and 87 appeal / miss cases in the high court. Besides, there are 7,009 eviction proposals sent to the district administration, 7,532 POR cases and 6,130 cases in other systems.

The meeting was chaired by Saber Hossain Chowdhury, chairman of the committee, and was attended by members Shahab Uddin, Minister for Forest and Climate Change, Nazim Uddin Ahmed, Zafar Alam, Rezaul Karim Bablu, Khodeja Nasrin Akter Hossain and Shahin Chakladar.