Forest land allotted to corporates in Gujarat

The state government allotted more than 2,200 hectare of forest land to different industrial houses for non-forest purposes in Kutch and Surat in the last three years and recovered Rs116 crore from them, the government informed the assembly on Tuesday.

Forest minister Mangu Patel said in a written reply in the assembly that a total of 2,211 hectare of forest land was allotted to Essar Steel, Coastal Gujarat Power Company, Essar SEZ (Hazira) Limited, Adani Group, Hutch Fascel Limited, Vodafone Essar Gujarat Limited, Tata Telecom, Hazira LNG Limited, Gujarat Gas Company, Gujarat Anjan Cement, among others, in the two districts from 2009 to 2011.

“The forest land is not sold to the industries. The forest land is allotted to industries after recovering the net present value of the allotted land and the cost of compensatory afforestation in non-forest land of similar area from the industrial house,” Patel said.

The Adani Group alone was allotted over 2,008 hectare of forest land for the Mundra Port and SEZ Limited. The government recovered Rs99.85 crore from Adani Group for compensatory afforestation and as the value of the land.

The Coastal Gujarat Power Company was allotted 130 hectare forest land for its Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Mundra. Essar Steel and Essar SEZ (Hazira) Limited were allotted 34 hectare and 5 hectare forest land respectively in Surat.

According to the minister’s reply, Hutch Fascel Limited was allotted 9.6 hectare forst land in Kutch and 1.14 hectare in Surat. Vodafone Essar Gujarat was allotted 10.01 hectare
forest land.