Red signal for green dilution

SC underlines the need for better compliance

The Supreme Court has administered an important corrective, directing the government to follow the wider “dictionary definition” of forests as laid down in a two-Bench judgment of the apex court in 1996. The latest judgment was passed by a three-judge Bench on several petitions against the amendments to the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), passed by both Houses of Parliament in 2023. These amendments made the FCA applicable only to notified forest and land identified as “forest” in government records. The stated reason for the amendments was that the 1996 judgment applied the provisions of the FCA to recorded forests that