Overview

• The Supreme Court of India has directed all states and Union Territories to establish special investigation teams (SITs) to examine illegal allocations of reserved forest lands for non-forestry purposes.
• Lands wrongfully allocated must be reclaimed and transferred to forest departments, or their costs recovered and used for forest development if reclamation is not in the public interest.
• Chief Secretaries and UT administrators are tasked with ensuring that all land transfers or cost recoveries are completed within one year, per the court's directive.
• The court emphasized that reclaimed lands must be exclusively used for afforestation and forest conservation efforts.
• The judgment, arising from a Pune case, highlights systemic corruption involving politicians, bureaucrats, and builders in forest land conversions under false pretenses.