Another Story from Pench -Reclaiming Compartment 229

Suhas Kumar

When I joined Pench National Park in April 1985, my team was brand-new and small. As you could guess, almost all of them were oblivious to the enormity of tasks ahead of us.

A paradise was in the making, but many hurdles still impeded our progress. In the current story, I am to talk about one of those impediments.

This particular story is about Compartment 229 of the Chhindwara range located at the interstate boundary adjoining the Pench national park of Maharashtra. There were 80 households in this compartment. These houses belonged to the labourers, who were brought here temporarily in 1977 to help construct the Totaladoh dam.

They did not leave the area. Eight years had already elapsed. They had built their huts, and some of them began farming on the forest land. The local politicians facilitated their entry into the voter list. This way an encroachment slowly struck roots as a permanent village.

These people extracted timber and firewood from adjoining forests. The compartment -229 (a Reserved Forest) was an integral part of the national park, therefore, I had a duty to reclaim it for wildlife. I began writing letters to the Chief Engineer-in-charge of the Totaladoh dam, asking him to remove the encroachers without delay, but in vain. Till then the Forest Conservation Act didn’t have the biting teeth, and therefore the Chief Engineer paid no heed to my letters. This indifference continued for almost three years, and it aggravated my frustration. Then soon came an opportunity, the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 (FCA) was amended in 1988 to include a 15-day imprisonment clause for those errant officials who aided, abated or ignored the provisions of the FCA. A few days later, I summoned my Range Officer to my office and instructed him to keep a close watch on compartment 229, and if he found any new violation, he should issue a preliminary offence report and come straight to me.

At this time the lady luck was on my side, not even a month had elapsed and the range officer Thakur was standing before me with a (Preliminary Offence Report (POR) in his hand. He had issued a POR against an official of the irrigation department for breaking up forest land to construct a school. I immediately dictated a letter to the CCF Development to apprise him of the entire story of encroachment by the labourers. I also mentioned how the officials of the Totaladoh project had abetted this illegal act and ignored my letters written over the last three years and that they were brazenly violating the FCA again by attempting to build a school in compartment 229. I urged him to initiate action from the headquarters. The range officer proceeded to Bhopal to deliver this letter to Rajwade sahib, who was then the CCF in charge of the Land Management issues.

Those were the days when seniors facilitated the tasks of their subordinates in the field. After reading my letter, Rajwade sahib asked the range officer to wait outside. After an hour the range officer was called in, and an envelope was handed over to him with an instruction that the director (I) should immediately get those notices served on to the errant chief engineers.

Takhur reached Bhopal the next morning, handed over the envelope to me and repeated CCF’s instruction. The envelope contained formal notices under the FCA to the engineers asking them to remove all encroachers from the reserved forest without further delay or prepare for legal action. I got the notices served the same evening. The next morning, my neighbour, the DFO of the North production division, sent an orderly to inform me that the chief engineer of irrigation had called his office as he wanted to talk to me urgently. I waited for the next call to come and only a few minutes later he called again. The person on the other end requested me to come over to Totladoh for an urgent meeting on the issue of encroachment of compartment 229. I agreed and proceeded to Totaladoh. After reaching Totladoh, I deliberately stopped at an old decrepit rest house instead of the VIP rest house on the hillock by the side of the dam and waited for the officers to arrive. Within minutes five vehicles stormed into the rest house compound, and several officials emerged. After the preliminary greetings, they began insisting that I should accompany them to the VIP rest house for the meeting. Then, I reminded them of an incident that had happened two years back when they had refused to provide me accommodation in any of their rest houses on the ground that forest officials had once denied their chief engineer accommodation at Chhindwara Forest Rest House. After they became profusely apologetic, I accompanied them to the VIP rest house.

The room in which the meeting was arranged smelled like a halwai shop as the aroma of jalebi, samosa and a variety of namkeen emanating from the table permeated the air. I was immediately offered these tempting items, but I politely refused. Then the Chief engineer said –“Mr Kumar, this is a very old and large settlement, therefore, we need at least six months to relocate these people along with their belongings. We don’t even have the land to resettle these people so please grant us some time”. I saw through the sham – they were asking for more time as they had no intention to shift those encroachers. I said- “I gave you three years to remove those squatters, but you always ignored my letters; you didn’t even care to reply and now you are asking for more time. The problem is that the current correspondence by the CCF is not a letter but a notice under the Forest Conservation Act, therefore, I have no authority, whatsoever, to help you with ‘more time.' I have been instructed to ensure that the responsible authorities remove the encroachers without unnecessary delay. At the most, I can grant you 48 hrs. as I believe this is a reasonable time to accomplish the task.”

Then, I rose from my chair and left the meeting.

Suddenly leaving that meeting was a deliberate strategy to keep them alarmed and apprehensive. And I knew I had won this time. I decided to wait and watch. On the 3rd day, the range officer came to my office; I could sense that he had some good news for me as his face and body language betrayed his excitement. He said-“Sir, they have shifted 79 households, just one is left.” When I asked why they couldn’t remove the last one, he stated that the occupant was a mentally sick person and he had refused to shift along with others. Three days later the last household was also relocated. It turned out that all 80 families along with their household goods were transported in trucks to a piece of vacant land behind the Totaladoh dam only about one km away from compartment 229. Ironically, that land was within the territory of Pench National Park of Maharashtra.

I immediately managed some funds and constructed a forest check post at the border of the forest compartment 229 on Totladoh –Thueypani road and posted a game guard there.

Many years later, I learned that those 80 households continued within the Pench National Park of Maharashtra till 2010 when the High Court of Maharashtra ordered the immediate removal of this illegal settlement, without any compensation. However, the state government intervened, and the villages were relocated and rehabilitated outside the PA.

Looking at the situation in the field today, I wonder what would have happened to me if I had attempted the task of removing 80 families within 48 hrs in current times, probably I would have been relocated to Andaman within 24 hrs.