After SC order, Mumbai plots get re-tagged as 'private forest'

The ‘private forest’ tag is being restored to property registration cards in suburban Mumbai just 18 months after it began being deleted in accordance with a Supreme Court order. An official at the tehsildar’s office, Mulund, confirmed that recently the tehsildar’s office received instructions from the suburban collector to stop the deletions and restore the tag on property registration cards from where it had been deleted. Thus, the plot of Employees State Insurance Corporation Hospital in Mulund, land owned by Johnson & Johnson on LBS Marg, and a section of Mulund and Nahur Colony, a purely residential area, have been reclassified as private forest. The official said deletions were done earlier as otherwise “it would have been contempt of court”. The SC in January 2014 removed the ‘private forest’ tag attached to swathes of land across Maharashtra by the government and upheld by the high court, freeing up lakhs of acres for development.