Intended Forest Since 1994: Why Delhi's Most Threatened Ridge Land Is Still Outside the Law

Protecting the Easy Parcels First: Where the Ridge's Legal Shield Runs Out

The commitment is old and precise. On May 24, 1994, Delhi notified its Ridge areas under Section 4 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, declaring an intention to make them reserved forest. That intention becomes law only under Section 20, after a Forest Settlement Officer has inquired into and settled every claim over the land.

The data, thirty-two years later: of 7,772.3 demarcated hectares, about 4,850 have Section 20 status and roughly 849 more are proposed in the current phases. That leaves 2,073.226 hectares, more than a quarter of the Ridge, outside the proposed notifications, according to the Delhi Ridge Management Board's June 2026 minutes.

Why the

gap is not random The progress is real. The Central Ridge got 673.32 hectares notified in May, the Northern Ridge 112.328 hectares now and the Southern Ridge has 400.541 hectares in a draft awaiting the Lieutenant Governor.

After years in which the Supreme Court's Central Empowered Committee found only a small fraction of the Ridge notified, that is a genuine acceleration. The problem lies in what gets left out. The board lists the excluded land as parcels under government allotments, khasras awaiting Tatima (subdivision) proceedings, plots under court stays and private claims still being settled.

The Forest Department's affidavit to the NGT describes Phase-II(B) of the Southern Ridge as compromised by village abadis, unauthorised colonies, jhuggi clusters and religious structures. In other words, the land excluded from protection is the land where encroachment, litigation and competing claims are already concentrated.

The Southern Ridge alone accounts for 1,434.799 hectares, about 69% of the total gap.

The broken link:

settlement, not intent This is not a failure of political will at the announcement stage. The government keeps announcing new phases. The failure sits in one specific link: the claims-settlement process between Section 4 and Section 20.

It depends on revenue records being updated, on joint verification with the Revenue Department and on courts lifting stays. None of those processes is under the Forest Department's control and each can stall for years. Phase-wise notification is a practical response to that bottleneck: notify what is clear now, return to the rest later.

But it has a cost. The Central Ridge gazette says excluded pockets "will be taken in subsequent phases", without a deadline. Meanwhile, the unprotected parcels are exactly where pressure keeps building and every year of delay makes their settlement harder.

The Supreme Court captured the stakes in November 2025, observing that without proper statutory protection the integrity of the Ridge cannot be preserved and that the Delhi government had not acted with swiftness.

For the exam, the insight is this: forest protection in India often fails not at the declaration stage but in the settlement of land records. Measuring progress by hectares notified hides the fact that the hardest, most threatened land is always last in line.