300 acres of encroached land recovered in Karnataka’s Bukkapatna Chinkara Wildlife Sanctuary
Tumakuru: The Karnataka Forest Department recovered 300 acres of the Bukkapatna Chinkara Wildlife Sanctuary at Tiptur sub division in Sira Taluk, Tumkur district. The restored area, located in Survey No. 46 of Muthugadahalli Ambarpur, was declared as forest land in 1926 under the Forest Rights Act.
According to forest department records, as cited by The New Indian Express on Friday, this marks one of the largest recovery of forest land in recent years.
While 120 acres were recovered just last month from Kadugodi plantation—land reportedly worth over Rs 4,000 crore—this latest exercise in Bukkapatna stands out in scale. However, the record for the largest forest land recovery still remains with 600 acres reclaimed in Kolar in 2013, followed by 355 acres in Mallur in 2014.
V. Yedukondalu, Conservator of Forests, revealed that the land had been illegally granted by revenue officials to villagers over the past 30 years. Although no residential structures were present, agricultural activities such as the cultivation of coconut, cotton, arecanut, cowpea, and other crops had been ongoing for years.
“Following the recently issued Lokayukta directives and Supreme Court and Karnataka High Court orders, we asked the revenue department officials of the division to cancel the illegal records, and 64(A) proceedings were initiated (under Section 64(A) of the Karnataka Forest Act of 1963, and the eviction notice is issued to people illegally occupying land before recovering the land). Documents that we obtained showed that most of the land was illegally occupied, and on Thursday, the entire land parcel was recovered,” TNIE quoted him as saying.
Forest department officials mentioned that the exercise of digging pits to lay trenches and undertake plantations suitable for blackbucks has started.
“There are many more land parcels around the forest division that are also being recovered. The exercise has started,” Yedukondalu added.
The sanctuary (also known as the Black Buck Sanctuary) is spread across 36,000 acres and includes three reserve forests. It was notified in 2019 as a measure to protect the chinkaras (Indian gazelle) in their natural habitat of the dry thorny scrub forest, which faced the threat of excessive grazing. Apart from Chinkaras, the Bukkapatna Chinkara Wildlife Sanctuary is home to black bucks, four-horned antelope, sloth bear, leopard, striped hyena, and Indian wolf.
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SC slams WhatsApp, Meta over privacy policy, says will pass interim order on Feb 9
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down heavily on Meta Platforms Inc and WhatsApp while hearing their appeals against a Competition Commission of India order imposing a penalty of Rs 213.14 crore over the privacy policy, saying tech giants cannot “play with the right to privacy of citizens in the name of data sharing”.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said that it will pass an interim order on February 9. The top court ordered that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology be made a party to the petitions.
It was hearing appeals filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) judgment that upheld the CCI’s findings of abuse of dominance, while granting limited relief on advertising-related data sharing.
"You can't play with the right of privacy of this country in the name of data sharing. We will not allow you to share a single word of the data, either you give an undertaking...you cannot violate the right of privacy of citizens,” the CJI said.
The bench said the right to privacy is zealously guarded in the country and noted that the privacy terms are “so cleverly crafted” that a common person cannot understand them.
“This is a decent way of committing theft of private information, we will not allow you to do that... You have to give an undertaking otherwise, we have to pass an order,” the CJI said.
