We welcome the parliamentary standing committee on environment's decision to make public the names of 90,000 individuals and organisations who have illegally grabbed around 2.87 lakh acres of forestland of the forest department across the country. The decision was made after the environment, forest and climate change ministry made these revelations to the Jatiya Sangsad committee.

According to the chief of the parliamentary watchdog, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, the committee has also asked the ministry for a detailed report on the current state of the occupied forestland, to see how many evictions notices had been issued to evict the occupants and what steps had been taken by the authorities concerned to that end. That is also an encouraging step, as this newspaper has previously reported on the lack of initiative shown by the concerned authorities to reclaim occupied forestland.

Unfortunately, influential industrialists and individuals who have forcibly occupied the forestland often abuse the legal process—take stay orders from higher court through filing appeal when the authorities start eviction activities against them—to maintain their occupation, according to the ministry. And law enforcers allegedly do not always cooperate during their eviction drive, which is unacceptable, as the forestland belongs to the state and all its citizens, not to a select coterie of influential people.

We hope this is a first step towards reclaiming all of the forestland that have been grabbed illegally over the years. We also hope that the parliamentary standing committee, after making the names of these organisations and individuals public, will notify the concerned authorities to take urgent measures to do exactly that. At the same time, the fact that so much of forestland have been grabbed over the years must not be repeated again. Whatever legal barriers and bureaucratic mishaps that have led to this must also be identified and dealt with. No doubt this will be a long-drawn-out process but if the authorities are serious about retrieving our lost forestland, this endeavour must be followed through with fairness and integrity. We hope that the work of the parliamentary watchdog is successful.