Individuals cannot own this land
The High Court yesterday upheld a government decision that declared 13,000 acres of land in Sylhet's Jaintiapur and Gowainghat upazilas as reserved forest area.
Delivering the verdict on two writ petitions, the HC observed that the 13,000 acres is state property and cannot remain under the ownership of individuals.
The HC bench of Justice Zubayer Rahman Chowdhury and Justice Kazi Zinat Hoque through the verdict rejected the writ petitions challenging the legality of a gazette notification issued by the then government in 1985 declaring the 13,000 acres as reserved forest area.
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Sheikh Saifuzzaman told The Daily Star that the 13,000 acres had been acquired after the Partition of India in 1947 and some of the land was allocated to refugees who had come to that area from Assam of India.
The then Bangladesh government in 1985 issued a gazette notification declaring the land as reserved forest area. The total land area is now under the forest department of the government.
Nineteen people, including Abdul Motaleb and Md Rafiqul Islam, had filed the two writ petitions with the HC in 2012 and 2014 challenging the legality of the 1985 gazette notification.
They claimed in their petitions that they were the Mohajer (refugees) from Assam and they owned the land.
The HC then issued two rules asking the government to explain why the gazette notification declaring the land as reserved forest area should not be declared illegal.
After holding hearing on the rules, the HC bench yesterday rejected the writ petitions as the petitioners could not prove that they were refugees and they could not produce any documents in support of their claim, DAG Saifuzzaman said.
Replying to a query, the DAG said the total land area is now under the possession of the forest department.
He, however, could not give details about the writ petitioners.
This newspaper could not reach the petitioners' lawyer Chowdhury Sanwar Ali for comment.
SM Sazzad Hossain, deputy conservator of forests and also the divisional forest officer in Sylhet, said, "Other than the self-claimed refugees, a large area of the land has been grabbed by stone crushers. Over the years, we have evicted many people from the area, but this type of cases [filed by the petitioners] makes our efforts difficult.
"Once we receive the High Court order, we will conduct drives to evict all occupiers from the area with the help of the district administration," he added.
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