No farmhouse in Aravalli belt will be regularised, says Haryana forest minister

“There are even court orders that these farmhouses should be demolished. The Chief Minister had made lots of efforts that suitable action is taken in this matter so that our environment and natural resources are saved. But, till date no solution has come to light so that both the things can be saved and also people can be saved from getting duped. I would like to know if the government will act in future to redress this problem,” Trikha said during the Question Hour.

Replying to her question, the Forest Minister said that the state government keeps conducting a survey using drones regularly. “We had been issuing notices to the owners of all such farmhouses from time to time. There is a complete ban on new construction. If anybody attempted to raise any new construction, we had demolished it. Certain people have also gone to Supreme Court and whatever verdicts have been issued by the Court, we are following it,” Kanwar Pal added.

Congress leader Kiran Choudhry said, “The Supreme Court’s orders should be implemented thoroughly and all these farmhouses should be razed so that Haryana’s forest cover can be restored. As such, the forest cover in Haryana is depleting”.

Responding to minister’s assertion that the government will follow Supreme Court’s directions, whenever it comes, Choudhry added, “If Supreme Court will do everything, then why should I praise the government? I am wasting my praise on the government. The cases that are in the court are being disposed of by the court, but those cases that are not in the court, at least the government should act in such cases. There are several cases, which are not in the courts, at least those farmhouses should be razed”.

She also demanded that the government should provide details about how many of the 60 unauthorised farmhouses were removed.

Coming out in her government’s defence and suggesting that most of the farmhouses came during previous governments’ tenure, Seema Trikha again intervened and said, “I did not ask the government to raze all these farmhouses. I just sought this information because the actual exploitation of Aravallis that took place during 2003 till 2014. If the government had given me the data in the format I had asked including names of the owners and year-wise details when these farmhouses came into existence, then through this Vidhan Sabha today it would have come to light that who all related to which all governments owned these farmhouses.”