Animal activist complained about encroachments on forest land, no action yet

HT Live Thane-Mulund, Saturday, June 05, 2010 . Your Neighbourhood . Page 3

Thane : More than threemonths after animal activist Sunish Subramanian brought to light the encroachment on forest land at Hanuman Nagarin WagleEstate,little has been done to remove the encroach- ments.

Subramanian, founder and secretary of PAWS-Mumbai, hadvisited the site in March and found thatashop con- structionhadencroachedupon the forest land.

“Thereisaboundary wall demarcating the forest landand the adjoining MIDC land. The shop owner hadbrokendown thewallandextended the shop onto the forest land. This is a clear violation.Whatwerethe forest guards doing when the boundarywallwasdemolished and when the construction began?” said Subramanian.

Subramanian hadalready informed forest rangeofficer Prashant Masurkarabout the encroachment.Butwhennoth- ing came of it, he mailed alet- teronMarch21 along with pho- tographsandvideo to assistant conservator of forests of Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Yeoor forests)SatishPhaleandmarked acopytoenvironment minis- ter Jairam Ramesh, secretary of Animals WelfareBoardof India (AWBI) and other offi- cials.

D. Rajasekar,secretary of AWBI, recently directed the principal chief conservator of forests, Nagpur to takeaction against the encroachments.

Meanwhile,Yeoor forest offi- cialshave registeredanoffence andalso filedacaseintheThane court.
“The other partyhad raised doubts overthe demarcation of land.So,thecourthadordered asurvey forthesamebyagov- ernment agency.But the sur- vey has not yetbeen done.So, we aregoing to request the court in the next hearing on June 14 to go by what we say andorder the demolition of the encroachment,”said Satish Phale.