The case of a club

ON April 23, a two-Judge Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, comprising Chief Justice B.K. Roy and Justice Surya Kant, concluded the three-month-long hearing of the Golf club case and reserved its verdict on the matter. The case was the result of a public interest petition filed in the wake of a suo motu notice by the Bench following an expose in the Chandigarh edition of Hindustan Times on January 22.

The Bench found that in the construction of the Forest Hill Golf and Country Club at Karoran village in Rupnagar district of Punjab, about 8 km to the northwest of Chandigarh, both the Central law, the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA) had been breached, prima facie. The FCA bars anyone from using forest land for non-forestry purposes. The PLPA disallows change in land use without the Forest Department's permission. The Bench, on the basis of the newspaper report, also suspected the violation of conduct norms in the grant of "honorary membership" of the Club to top Indian Administrative Services (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers and other decision-makers.

The entire Karoran village is covered by the PLPA and is under the management of the State Forest Department. The total area of the village is included as "forest area" by the department, which regulates the felling of trees, through permits, and the grazing of cattle in all such areas, besides implementing afforestation and soil conservation works.

Col. B.S. Sandhu, president of "Dasmesh Educational Society", applied under the FCA in 1998 for the diversion of 4.94 hectares of forest land in the village to set up a farmhouse and a resort. The Conservator of Forests (Central), Ministry of Environment and Forests, conducted a site visit in June 1998 and found that gross violation of the FCA had been committed by the society, even prior to the submission of the case. In October 1998, the Conservator of Forests rejected Sandhu's proposal but could not stop him from further violations such as allegedly bulldozing large portions of the ecologically fragile Shiwalik hills and levelling forest land for making a golf course, and setting up other facilities for the resort. Sandhu, however, denied the allegation in court.

The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Punjab) told the High Court that any further degradation in the hilly Shiwalik region would have catastrophic consequences for the fertile plains of Punjab. "Deforestation and change in land use pattern in the areas closed under the PLPA in the Shiwalik hills will wreak untold havoc and devastation on the bread-basket and granary of India through massive floods and huge deposition of silt and sand on fertile agricultural lands. The loss of biodiversity in the hilly region and the other ecological consequences of such an act would be even more catastrophic than the actual physical damage and economic loss," the PCCF explained to the court.

The interim report submitted by the committee, constituted by the Government of Punjab in December 2003, on the basis of the site inspection revealed that the golf course was built on land whose topography was previously mostly hilly. The report also showed that Sandhu owned 379 acres (151.6 ha) of land in the village, and the ownership of this entire property was in violation of the FCA.