The Hindu, November 18, 2014
A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Monday
upheld the constitutional validity of the Kerala Forest (Vesting and
Management of Ecological Fragile Land) Act 2003.
The
Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice P.R.
Ramachandra Menon, while disposing a batch of writ petitions filed by
various estate owners, held that the Act could not be declared as
discriminatory and arbitrary and devoid of rational classification.
No violation of Article
The
court held that the State had the legislative competence to enact the
Act and the provisions of the Act did not violate Article 14 and 19
(equality before law and fundamental right respectively) of the
Constitution.
The court said that non-payment of
compensation for the fragile land taken over under Section 3 of the Act
could not be held to be violative of Article 300(A) of the Constitution.
Supreme
Court lawyer K.V. Viswanathan, who appeared for the State government,
contended that the ecologically fragile land meant any forest land or
any portion of it lying contiguous to or encircled by a reserved forest
or a vested forest or any other forest land owned by the government.
In
fact, the fragile land did not include the land used for cultivating
crops such as cardamom pepper, tea, areca nut or coconut.
There had been no specific law for preserving the ecologically fragile land owned by private parties.
The private owner could not be allowed to use the ecologically fragile land for commercial purpose.
The State government had a duty to take over such ecologically-fragile land, he contended.
The
petitioners argued that the State government had no power to enact such
a law. They contended that only Parliament was competent to make such
laws.
The court asked those whose land had been taken
over as fragile land to submit applications in a month to the custodian
of the ecologically-fragile land for reviewing the takeover
notification. The custodian was directed to examine and take a decision
in three months after receiving the application.
Merchiston Estate
The court also held that Merchiston Estate in Thiruvanthapuram could not be declared as ecologically-fragile land under the Act.
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