FORMER SPECIAL CHIEF SECRETARY FLAGS NAYAGAON FAMILIES STILL WAITING FOR BUILDING PLANS AND SEWER CONNECTIONS
Face2News/Chandigarh
The Punjab Forest Department’s new Standard Operating Procedure for forest-clearance cases on land under the Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1900 (PLPA) will leave applicants going round in circles between departments. That will continue unless the State Government replaces parallel departmental instructions with one composite circular approved by the Council of Ministers, former Special Chief Secretary KBS Sidhu said today.
The SoP, issued on 14 September 2026 by the Nodal Officer (FCA) to the Divisional Forest Officers of the Hills Zone, lists thirteen requirements for cases in the closed and open PLPA areas. KBS Sidhu welcomed it as a published checklist that replaces query-by-query correspondence. He praised its insistence on a proper Punjab Pollution Control Board NoC rather than an undertaking, and on the DFO’s own report on nearby choes, nallahs and springs. He also welcomed the order of 8 September deferring the Greening Punjab Mission fee of ₹50 per square metre until after Stage-I approval, which spares applicants whose cases fail early.
The difficulty, KBS Sidhu said, lies outside the SoP. Before a case moves, the SoP requires approved building plans, a change of land use certificate and a Master Plan certification. The authorities that issue those documents are GMADA outside municipal limits and the municipal bodies within them, and for years they have waited for the Forest Department’s view first. “Each department waits for the other, and the citizen goes round and round. A checklist cannot cure a deadlock that lies between departments, not within one,” he said.
KBS Sidhu faced a contempt petition over the same demarcation failure in 2016, while serving as Financial Commissioner Revenue. He noted that on 22 July 2026 the Punjab and Haryana High Court restrained construction, land transfers and fresh mutations in sixteen villages, including Karoran and Nada. The Court also directed a joint Forest and Revenue team to determine the extent of forest land as it stood on 25 October 1980.
He has proposed a single circular drafted jointly by the Departments of Forests and Wildlife Preservation, Housing and Urban Development, Local Government, Revenue, and Science, Technology and Environment. Finance would examine it, the Legal Remembrancer and the Advocate General would vet it, and the Council of Ministers would approve it. The General Administration Department would then issue it under the Chief Secretary’s signature. The circular would:
• place every delisted khasra in one of four categories, each with one regulating authority;
• provide a single Khasra Status Certificate binding on all departments;
• fix time limits for decisions;
• state plainly that commercial use remains barred.A circular cannot, however, vary the conditions the Centre attached to the 2009 delisting, nor modify a court order. KBS Sidhu therefore suggested that the same Cabinet decision authorise two further steps:
• a reference to the Union Environment Ministry, seeking clarification that an owner’s home on delisted habitation land inside municipal limits falls within that approval;
• an application by the Advocate General to the High Court.
He singled out the Municipal Council, Nayagaon, which takes in parts of Kansal, Karoran and Nada along the UT Chandigarh boundary. “These are not resort promoters. They are families on three- and four-marla plots who have waited years for a building plan and a sewer connection,” he said. He urged three steps:
• demarcation should begin with the built-up municipal portions of Karoran and Nada;
• existing homes should get water and sewer connections on payment, subject to the Court’s leave and without conferring regularity;
• Punjab should finalise the Sukhna eco-sensitive zone, as Haryana has done on its side of the sanctuary.KBS Sidhu has sent these suggestions to the Chief Secretary, Punjab, and the Administrative Secretaries concerned in a D.O. letter dated 16 September 2026, with an outline of the proposed circular annexed.
Chandigarh
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