Jammu, May 19 : Police and the forest department on Tuesday carried out an anti-encroachment drive in the outskirts of Jammu city and demolished around 20-30 structures to retrieve nearly 60 kanals of prime forest land, officials said.
Officials of the forest department, Forest Protection Force, revenue department and the police launched the operation to evict alleged encroachers from the forest area.
Despite resistance from the alleged encroachers, the drive continued for nearly three to four hours, during which around 20-30 structures, mostly kaccha constructions, were demolished in the Mahamaya forest belt, they said.
Officials said that nearly 60 kanals of land, worth crores of rupees in the Raika Bandi forest belt of the lower Shivalik range, were reclaimed during the operation.
The affected families staged protests against the action and termed the demolition drive “unjustified”. They alleged that the drive was carried out without any prior notice.
The officials said there were hardly few structures in this Mahamaya forest belt five to six years ago but not scores of illegal structures have come up while new constructions continue.
Officials said that the forest department will undertake mapping of tribal settlements and other habitations in forest areas across Jammu to check further encroachments.
“All such areas will be photographed and videographed and the records will be uploaded on official websites after verification of documents,” an official said.
“We will not allow any forest land to be encroached upon and all illegal occupations will be removed,” the official added.
According to official figures, the Jammu district accounted for 1,45,487 kanals and six marlas of encroached land, while the Srinagar district recorded 13,862.95 kanals, indicating that the Jammu district alone had over ten times more encroached land than Srinagar.
The official data further revealed that more than 17 lakh kanals of government land have been encroached upon across Jammu and Kashmir, with Jammu division accounting for over 14 lakh kanals — more than three times the figure recorded in Kashmir division.
“As many as 17,27,247 kanals of encroached State land entries were expunged from revenue records across Jammu and Kashmir,” the data stated.
Of the total, Jammu division accounted for 14,00,051 kanals and five marlas of encroached State land whose entries were removed from revenue records, while Kashmir division recorded 3,27,199 kanals, the figures showed.
Environmental experts blamed rampant encroachments in hills and forest areas around Jammu for rising temperatures and incidents of flash floods in the city.
“The lower Shivaliks and Niki Tawi areas are considered the oxygen lungs of Jammu city, but they are gradually witnessing large-scale encroachments and illegal constructions, creating a concrete jungle and adversely affecting the city’s climate,” environmentalist Prof Bushan Lal said.
