By Shivani Muthanna, CNBC-TV18

The Bombay High Court has upheld the state government’s stand on vast stretches of land between Mulund, Borivli, Kandivli in Mumbai and in Thane. It has declared these entire tracts of land along these lands as forest land. It has also dismissed the petition of a large number of developers who were constructing projects on these tracts of land.

 They have dismissed the petition. So, this means that projects on over 1,000 acres could be stalled. In fact two years back in 2006, the BMC had issue a stop work notice on these projects. But developers were taking the risk of going ahead with the construction. 5,000 families are currently living in over one lakh apartments in the “declared forest land” zone.

The case started in 1957 when the state forest department had notified around 300 plots of land as forest land. However, the revenue department of the state was not intimated. Meanwhile in 1975, the state government passed the Private Forest Act under which was declared as forest land. However in 2001, an environmental action group passed a petition in the court saying that the state government was not acting upon its own law that is the Private Forest Land Act because it had not claimed the 305 plots that the State forest department had notified. So, in 2006, the state government did file a stop work notice on all these projects.

Now developers and residents plan to appeal to the Supreme Court in order to get some sort of relief.