Environmentalists urge Haryana to withdraw bill that lifts PLPA shield from Aravalis

GURUGRAM: The contentious Punjab Land Preservation (Haryana Amendment) Bill was passed by the state government in 2019. Two years on, there is still a growing clamour for scrapping the bill.

The bill, which is yet to be notified, was passed by the state government in February 2019 despite vehement objections and without a select committee review. The month after, in a rare public rebuke, the Supreme Court stayed its implementation and said the state would not act on it without the court’s nod.

Environmentalists point out that the Aravalis has 60,000 acres of forests notified under the sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA) of 1900, and the amendments will pave the way for denotification of most of these areas, opening them up for real estate development and urbanisation. So to save the Aravalis in the region, the bill must be withdrawn at the earliest.

Neelam Ahluwalia of NGO Aravalli Bachao movement, told TOI, “The government must consult with experts about the implications of the bill and withdraw the amendment which stands to benefit the real estate sector only.”

The activists also claim that the government has been trying to obfuscate the differences between the provisions of the general and special sections of the PLPA, and has been wrongly saying that farmers will have to stop farming, entire cities with lakhs of houses will be razed, and over 11 lakh hectares will be treated as forest in Haryana if the bill isn’t notified.

“The bill has been passed without public consultation, and apparently without forest department consultation. Moreover, the problem which the amendment bill wants to solve doesn’t exist at all. The basis on which the bill was passed is faulty and thus the government should withdraw this at the earliest,” said SS Oberoi, another environmentalist.