The High Court of Meghalaya has come down heavily on the State Forest Department for according permission to fell trees on specious grounds. In its April 9, 2025 judgment the two-judge bench of Chief Justice I.P. Mukerji and Justice W. Diengdoh has taken a dim view of the fact that officers of the rank of Range Forest Officer or Beat Forest Officer have been processing the applications and that they have recommended large scale felling of trees on grounds that those trees posed a threat to life and property. Considering the poor implementation of the rule of law in this country and in the State of Meghalaya, permission to fell trees is often given arbitrarily without doing due diligence on whether the trees actually need to be felled. This happens especially if the complainants who want the trees felled for their vested interests are influential citizens.
The High Court asked the State respondents “to inspect the trees covered by each and every pending application, process the application, take measures to preserve the tree or trees as far as possible and only sanction their felling if they had become so imminently dangerous that if allowed to stand for even some time, they would cause damage to life and property.” The Court directed the state respondents that each application for felling of trees requires a detailed report and further observed that not a single tree was to be felled until the Court had considered the report, except in case of imminent danger. The High Court further noted that in too many cases culprits are indiscriminately felling trees which are converted into logs and such are being transported on a large scale. On this matter the High Court might want to set up an Independent Committee to report back to it on the relentless felling of trees across the state, despite the presence of forest guards. In fact, the loss of forest cover in Meghalaya due to rampant deforestation and charcoal burning is a cause of great concern.
The Indian State of Forest Report (IFSR) 2024 finds that Meghalaya’s forest cover had decreased by 84.7 sq kms in two years. Experts and others opine that the loss of forest cover is much more than what is reported by the IFSR. Meanwhile the High Court has tasked the Chief Secretary with constituting a Committee of three officials comprising the Chief Conservator of Forests, an expert in Botany whether in government service or private service and a senior administrative officer not below the rank of Secretary to advise the government on steps to be taken to stop indiscriminate felling of trees throughout the State. While the High Court order is much appreciated, it would be fair to include members of environmental NGOs that are committed to conservation and will likely take their task much more seriously. Depletion of forest cover is adding to the climate change impact but all this is overlooked on the plea that forests provide livelihoods. Clearly the High Court will have to keep a continued vigil on this matter.