Kundapur: Afforestation - GP, revenue officials stop forest department officials

Silvester D’Souza
Daijiworld Media Network – Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, Jul 13: In an interesting incident, gram panchayat (GP) and revenue officials stopped forest officials from planting saplings as part of their annual afforestation programme, in a piece of land earmarked by the government for other purposes. They sent back both the forest officials and workers deployed by them for the task. The incident occurred at Kanyaya village under Hattinangady gram panchayat on Friday July 12.

A plot of 11.30 acres is located under survey No. 96/1 of Kanyana village in front of Hattiangady gram panchayat office. In the past, the land had been shown in records as government land, but later, it was earmarked for other purposes, as local government schools and government offices were facing shortage of land. Land equivalent to this was converted elsewhere as government land.

In the year 1980, revenue department and gram panchayat together planted cashew saplings in this land, in order to ensure that the land does not lie vacant. On the basis of the fact that cashew trees are standing here, the forest department felt that this land falls under forest buffer, and came with workers last week, and began digging over 1,000 pits for planting saplings. At that time, village accountant of Hattiangady village had intervened and got the work suspended.

However, all of a sudden, a forest guard named Manjunath, came with some workers to the spot on Friday, and started planting saplings. Hattiangady gram panchayat members and village accountant approached them and raised objection.  The official continued to work in spite of objections, but he and his workers were forced to go away after more people and other officials of the gram panchayat came to the spot. The gram panchayat members thereafter uprooted the saplings planted by the forest department.

Gram panchayat former president, Totabail Santosh Shetty, members, Sablady Santosh Shetty, Ashok Devadiga, Prabhakar Shetty, village accountant, Kantaraju, and others were present.