14,359 hectares of forest land encroached upon in J&K

Jammu and Kashmir government today said that 14,359 hectares of forest land has been encroached upon in the state.

Replying to a question of Basharat Ahmed Bukhari during the Question Hour in Legislative Assembly, Minister for Forest, Environment and Ecology Mian Altaf said that 14,359 hectares of forest land is under encroachment in the state.

He said the forest land under encroachment in Kashmir and Jammu regions is 4,877 hectares and 9,482 hectares respectively.

“Whenever any incident of encroachment is reported, all possible steps are taken to retrieve forest land and cases are lodged against the culprits,” he said.

Besides, special drives are regularly carried out to get the encroached land evicted, he said.

64 hectares of forest land in Jammu and 944 hectares in Kashmir have been retrieved from the encroacher’s, he said.

Besides this, 65 attempts on encroachments on about 286 hectares of forest land in Jammu were foiled from 2005 to this time, he said.