The parliamentary standing committee on the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change discussed the issue on Sunday. The committee asked the ministry to issue the eviction notices by Jan 30, 2021 after making a list of the encroachers within Dec 20 this year. The ministry will also have to submit a list of the encroachers who have occupied forestlands that are not reserved by Jan 31. Nearly 208,500 acres out of over 4.6 million acres of forestland of different categories currently are illegally occupied by 88,215 individuals and organisations, according to the minutes of the meeting. The ministry informed the committee it was working on a list of 90,000 encroachers following a previous directive.

Source: bd News24 November 29, 2020 16:52 UTC