Mumbai: The forest department on Friday uncovered at least four large underground tanks that were being used to store illicit liquor amid various encroachments from inside the boundary of Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), a protected area.
The area near Sai Bangodapada village has been encroached for several years and had become a hooch manufacturing hub, forest department officials said, adding that the tanks (and hooch inside them) were destroyed immediately using earthmoving machines during a demolition drive on Friday.
“The forest compartment which had been encroached is 38 hectares in size. The encroachments themselves were occupying about 25.5 hectares of this land in a honeycomb pattern, comprising mainly deforested parcels which had been converted for agriculture, along with some unauthorised sheds, wire fences, water pipelines, hooch tanks and kilns for boiling alcohol. These were all cleared up in the presence of 300 policemen, 210 forest department staff and about 100 additional labourers. We plan to reforest the area, and will also be setting up a protection camp to ensure that encroachers do not return to the spot,” said G Mallikarjuna, chief conservator of forests (SGNP).
This is the second major drive to clear encroachments in SGNP after 30 hectares of agricultural encroachments were cleared by the forest department in the Yeoor Range last summer. In 2019, about 15 hooch manufacturing units in the Yeoor Range were also demolished.
Despite efforts to control them, such encroachments within the park have continued to balloon, and an official forest department report in 2019 estimated that about a tenth of SGNP’s 10,300-ha land cover (about 1,126.87ha) is under encroachment, with over 25,000 illegal structures inside the park itself.
The forest department had previously run into conflicts with encroachers in the region. On March 23, 2020, five forest officers who went to Sai Bangodapada to question locals were allegedly attacked. One of them had to be admitted to Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Care Centre with injuries. A few days before that, a forest guard had also been beaten up in the nearby Filterpada settlement.
“The residents of Sai Bangodapada, many of whom belong to the tribal community, have been encroaching on the area for years, but under the guise of lockdown, we saw that more and more forest land was being destroyed. Due to immense police presence, today’s demolition drive has gone very smoothly,” said Uday Dhage, range forest officer, SGNP.
Environmentalists have proposed two key measures to halt the ingress of encroachments in the park. One of these involves bringing an estimated 210 hectares of vacant green land within the park’s boundaries, in a bid to compensate for forest land which has been lost to encroachers. The 210 hectares are divided across eight land parcels that abut the periphery of SGNP in Thane, Vihar Lake, Goregaon, Kandivali, Malad, Mira Road and Dahisar, and are currently classified in the DP2034 as ‘no development zones’.
“There are still several encroachments in the park, comprising both non-tribal and tribal families, which makes resettlement harder because some people will have to be legitimately rehabilitated if they are expelled from SGNP. Damu Nagar, Akurli, Poisar, Yeoor, Thane and Mulund areas of the park have all been encroached on,” said Stalin D, director of environment NGO Vanashakti. “It is best to excise these areas from the park, provide the residents with basic amenities and protect what is left,” he added.
Another demand placed before the authorities is the construction of a boundary wall, which was one of the mandates given by the Bombay High Court over 17 years ago. However, in many places, SGNP continues to have a porous boundary and the construction of the boundary wall remains incomplete due to religious and political reasons.
For example, the wall at the Mulund (west) border of the park has not been completed due to the presence of the Ayappa temple. Similar obstructions have prevented the boundary wall from coming up in Akurli and Kandivali areas, among others. Environmentalists said such a move – finishing the boundary wall after the inclusion of new land parcels within SGNP – will be the most practical to execute as it will not require displacement or resettlement of affected persons.