Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam / Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023

The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023 received the assent of the President of India on 4 August 2023 and was published in the Gazette as Act No. 23 of 2023. It amended the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, the parent statute enacted under the Union's competence over forests after the subject was moved to the Concurrent List by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act 1976. The amendment also gave the parent Act a Hindi short title, Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, translating to the "Forest (Conservation and Augmentation) Act," and the word "Samvardhan" (augmentation) signalled the legislature's stated intent to add afforestation and carbon-sink objectives to the original conservation mandate. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 29 March 2023, referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament chaired by Rajendra Agrawal, and passed by both Houses in the monsoon session in late July and early August 2023.

The substantive mechanics of the 1980 Act, which the amendment retains, require the prior approval of the Central Government before a State or any authority dereserves a reserved forest, uses forest land for a non-forest purpose, assigns forest land to a private entity, or clears naturally grown trees for reafforestation. Under Section 2 of the parent Act, no such use may proceed without Union clearance, processed through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and its regional empowered committees, frequently coupled with compensatory afforestation and payment into the Compensatory Afforestation Fund managed under the CAMPA framework. The 2023 amendment inserted a new preamble articulating India's commitments to a forest and tree cover target sufficient to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, an objective drawn from the Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

The amendment's most consequential change was the insertion of Section 1A, which defines the scope of land to which the Act applies. The Act now covers land notified as forest under the Indian Forest Act 1927 or any other law, and land recorded as forest in government records on or after 25 October 1980. It then enumerates exempted categories: forest land within 100 kilometres of international borders, Lines of Actual Control or Lines of Control proposed for national-security-linked strategic linear projects; up to 10 hectares proposed for security-related infrastructure; and up to 5 hectares in left-wing-extremism-affected areas for public-utility projects. It further exempts land converted to non-forest use before 12 December 1996, and roadside or railside plantations and small zoos and safaris.

The reference to 12 December 1996 is deliberate and central to understanding the controversy. On that date, in T. N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, the Supreme Court of India held that the word "forest" in the 1980 Act must be understood in its dictionary sense and applies to all areas recorded as forest regardless of ownership or notification, vastly expanding the Act's reach to so-called "deemed forests." The 2023 amendment legislatively confined the Act to recorded or notified forests, effectively reversing the practical breadth of the Godavarman interpretation. The Ministry issued the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Rules 2023, notified on 29 November 2023, to operationalise the procedural regime. In Ashok Kumar Sharma v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court directed States to abide by the expansive Godavarman definition pending final adjudication, complicating the amendment's intended narrowing.

The Act should be distinguished from adjacent instruments. The Forest Rights Act 2006 (Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Recognition of Forest Rights Act) vests individual and community rights in forest dwellers and requires gram sabha consent for diversion; critics argued the 2023 amendment's exemptions could bypass this consent. The Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 governs protected areas and species, while the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 underlies the Environmental Impact Assessment notification regime that runs parallel to, not in place of, forest clearance. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 governs the CAMPA money, not the diversion decision itself.

The amendment generated substantial opposition. Over a hundred former civil servants, ecologists, and the Constitutional Conduct Group warned that excluding unclassified and deemed forests—estimated at roughly a quarter of India's forest cover—from statutory protection would expose the Northeast and ecologically sensitive border tracts to unregulated diversion. Petitions challenging the constitutionality of the amendment, including by retired forest officers, are pending before the Supreme Court, which in its February 2024 interim order in the Ashok Kumar Sharma matter required States to prepare consolidated records of all forest-like lands. The interplay between the legislative narrowing and the judicial insistence on the Godavarman standard remains unresolved as of the most recent proceedings.

For the working practitioner—UPSC aspirants preparing GS Paper 3 environment topics, environmental lawyers, and policy desk officers—the 2023 amendment is a pivotal case study in the tension between development imperatives, national security along contested frontiers, and constitutional environmental jurisprudence. It illustrates how a legislature may attempt to recalibrate a judicial interpretation, the salience of the 25 October 1980 and 12 December 1996 cutoff dates, and the layered consent architecture involving the Centre, States, and gram sabhas. Mastery of the exemption categories and the Godavarman backdrop is essential for any analysis of contemporary Indian forest governance.