A legal advisory committee of India’s environment ministry has approved a plan to offset the clearing of a large area of contiguous forest in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district by planting replacement forest 1,000 kilometers away, in 23 fragmented patches, on land that government data shows is already largely forested.
The forest proposed for conversion is a single, unbroken block of 937 hectares within the Bhamrajad Forest Reserve – a dry southern tropical forest dominated by teak and bamboo that supports the Indian gaur, sloth bear, leopard, dhole, leopard and giant squirrel in central India, where nearly 123,000 trees could be felled to make way for the iron ore project.
The building straddles a vital wildlife corridor connecting the Tadoba-Andari Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur district and the Indravati Tiger Reserve across the border in Chhattisgarh. Within 10 kilometers lie 40 villages, inhabited by more than 15,000 people – mostly from Gond and Madia tribal communities who hold community forest resource rights under the Forest Rights Act 2006.
The recommendation to clear forest land was made by the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), the statutory body under the Union environment ministry that evaluates proposals for conversion of forest land, to Lloyds Metals And Energy Limited to explore, drill and recover low-grade iron ore in the Etapalli cluster in Gadchiroli, according to minutes of the committee reviewed by HT.
The Phase 1 approval – an initial approval stipulating conditions, including compensatory afforestation, that must be met before formal Phase 2 conversion approval is granted – was approved on May 12, 2025. The last FAAC meeting, on March 23, 2026, was held specifically to approve the change to the compensatory afforestation requirement – replacing a former abandoned site with the current 23-lot site. Genesis.
The Forestry (Conservation) Act 1980 requires compensatory afforestation for any forest conversion: new plantation to replace what has been removed. Where non-forest land is not available in the same area, an alternative site may be identified elsewhere – but under Department of the Environment guidelines, it must remain as close to the original site as possible.
The city of Gadchiroli, located in eastern Maharashtra near the Chhattisgarh border, has a forest cover of 76%, leaving little non-forest land available, the Forest Control Commission noted. The approved alternative site is located in Ratnagiri district on Maharashtra’s Konkan coast – on the western side of the Sahyadri Mountains, about 1,000 km from Gadchiroli and on the other side of the Western Ghats – and is spread across 23 fragmented plots in nine villages covering an area of 1,012.95 hectares.
But distance is not the most acute problem. Forest cover analysis conducted by the Ministry of Environment shows that of that 1,012 hectares, 150 hectares contain very dense forests and 583 medium-dense forests, together representing nearly three-quarters of the designated area.
Another 144 hectares are classified as open forest, which is defined by the Forest Survey of India as land with canopy cover ranging from 10% to 40%.
In other words, the majority of land designated for compensatory afforestation already contains forests.
The environmental character of the two sites varies further. Gadchiroli forests are dry and deciduous, receiving about 1000 mm of annual rainfall. The alternate Konkan patches occupy the wetter, west-facing slopes of the Sahyadri Range – a tropical, humid, deciduous, semi-evergreen terrain with much higher rainfall and lateritic plateaus.
The replacement land is adjacent to the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, which was notified in 2010 and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Western Ghats, and falls within the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats region.
The current configuration is itself an alternative. The previous alternative site – 990,265 hectares in Offale village, also in Ratnagiri – was abandoned after the land acquisition failed. The 23-plot arrangement was later approved by the environment ministry’s regional office, which described the land as “mostly contiguous” and noted its proximity to the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve.
“The idea that the destruction of one contiguous 937-hectare patch of dense forest can be offset by 23 fragmented plots in a completely different ecoregion is untenable,” said Sharachchandra Lele, a distinguished fellow at the Ashoka Fund for Research in Ecology and the Environment. “The Forestry and Forestry Commission itself notes that the majority of the land is already covered by forests. It is unclear how this can be classified as ‘afforestation’.”
Lele also pointed out that diversion of forests in areas where tribal communities have Forest Rights Act entitlements requires village council approval, as ordered by the Supreme Court in the 2013 Niyamgiri bauxite mining case.
Documents on the Parivesh portal show that Lloyds Metals has sought a certificate from the Gadchiroli district collector stating that gram sabhas have decided that no tribal or forest dwellers have rights to forest land in the project area.
In approving the project, the FAC cited the active designation of the Gadchiroli district as a left-wing extremism affected area under the Ministry of Home Affairs and the project’s proximity to Lloyds Metals’ existing Surjagarh iron ore mines – a proximity that reduces transportation distances for low-grade ore and reduces associated emissions.
A worthy wildlife conservation plan $1,204.20 lakh was stipulated: $610 thousand spent by the company within the project area $594.20 lakh by the state forest department in the buffer zone.
“The company has obtained all required legal permissions for the project, including those related to compensatory afforestation,” the PRO office of Lloyds Metals and Energy Limited’s Gadchiroli plant said.
The statement added: “The afforestation process will be carried out strictly in accordance with the approved plans, and all necessary measures will be taken to protect and maintain the wooded areas to ensure their long-term sustainability.”
