Raman's plea for conversion of 420 C'garh villages

New Delhi, June 1 (UNI) Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh today urged Union Minister of Environment and Forests A.Raja to take early steps for conversion of 420 forest villages of the State into revenue villages to enable the villagers to get the benefit of many bankable schemes and subsidy programmes.

The Chief Minister, who met Mr Raja here, told him that many of the bankable schemes and subsidy programmes being beneficiary oriented were not reaching the forest villages as the people there did not possess pattas(land ownership) of the land due to the land being forestland.

The conversion of forest villages into revenue villages basically involved the assignment of the pattas in favour of the individual residents of the forest villages, Dr Singh told Mr Raja.

He requested the Union Minister to take pro-active stand to dereserve the forest land for converting the forest villages into revenue villages in the larger interest of the communities living in the forest villages. He called for exemption from payment of Net Present Value(NPV) and carrying out compensatory afforestation for the purpose.

UNI YS RP VV1645