India, Aug. 4 -- The Bombay High Court recently granted relief to most of the petitioners in 184 cases, where the state government had declared privately-owned forest land as "private forest" under the Maharashtra Private Forests (Acquisition) Act, 1975.

Setting aside the declaration of several land parcels as "private forest" vested with the state government without the mandatory notice as laid down by the Supreme Court in two important decisions, the high court said it was "unfortunate" that the state government had still not complied with them.

"The state government continued to reel under this misconception for a considerable period of time and at least for more than a decade and it repeatedly adopted the same stand when the two imp...