Jhagadia MLA and Bhartiya Tribal Party supremo Chhotu Vasava has written to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, seeking the immediate removal of encroachments from forest lands across Gujarat, Referring to a recent report by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), which pegged an area of 292.38 hectares of forest land in Gujarat being under encroachments, Vasava contented that the state has allowed “powerful heavyweights of political organisations” to encroach lands for resorts and other commercial activities including illegal mining, thus “causing destruction” to forests as well as their tribal inhabitants.
He said, “It is a known fact that several heavyweights and powerful persons belonging to parties, mining operators (quarry industry), industrialists, resort owners and so on, have undertaken illegal cutting of trees and completed illegal construction of resorts, structures or by illegal mining, exploited forest lands that fall under the non-agriculture category, thus making a mockery of the laws present to protect Forest Lands.”