Photo: P Jayesh
Kottayam: The Kerala government feels that it may not be much difficult to resolve the issue of residential areas being marked as forest land on the map put out by the government regarding buffer zones. The department will have to convince the wildlife board that they were actually revenue or Patta lands and how the error happened.
The state board will forward a recommendation to the central welfare board to rectify the mistake. A meeting of the state wildlife board chaired by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan will be held on Thursday.
Minister AK Saseendran has said that the forest department will not lay claim to land wrongly marked as forest.
There are two types of such cases in the state. One is that residential areas were marked as forests while preparing the map in 2011-12. The Angel Valley incident in Erumeli belongs to this category. In some areas, the information about the land has not been changed after giving Patta. This is the issue in Aralam, Chittar and Seethathodu.
As the land information was not changed, the survey numbers were excluded from the map.
The mistake in the area under the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in Angel Valley is grave. The final notification on wildlife sanctuaries including Periyar is under consideration of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The mistakes came to light as the map was published because of the court order on eco sensitive zones.
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