Tamil Nadu Assembly passes Bill to amend Tamil Nadu Forest Act, 1882

Tamil Nadu government will amend the Tamil Nadu Forest Act, 1882, to be called as Tamil Nadu Forest (Amendment) Act, 2025, by inserting of Section 16-B that states declaration of compensatory afforestation land to be reserved forest. Minister for Forests K Ponmudy moved the Bill in the Assembly on Saturday.

On the statement of objects and reasons, the Bill says that whenever any forest land is used for non-forest purposes, the user agency shall provide specified extent of land for the purpose of compulsory afforestation. Further, as per the guidelines issued on January 24, 2023, by the Centre on the Accredited Compensatory Afforestation, the said compensatory afforestation land should be declared as protected forest within the time frame prescribed by the Centre.

However, the procedures prescribed in Sections 4 to 16 of the Tamil Nadu Forest Act, 1882, for declaring any land as reserved forest (same as protected forest) are elaborate and time consuming. To declare the compensatory afforestation lands as reserved forests expeditiously, it has been decided to make a special provision on the lines of Section 16-A of the said Act.

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Further, for constituting a land as reserved forest under the Act, the government is required to issue two notifications – one under Section 4 of the Act to declare their intention and another under Section 16 of the Act to declare the land as reserved forest. As the above requirements to issue notifications on two occasions by the Government has resulted in considerable delay in constitution of reserved forest, it is felt to delegate the powers of the government to issue Notification order under Section 16 of the said Act to an officer of the Revenue Department not below the rank of the District Collector by amending Section of the said Act, said the Bill, which was approved by the Assembly.

The Assembly also approved other Bills, including one to amend the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Act, 1978 by amending Section 4 to bring on board an officer in the rank of Deputy Secretary to Government, Finance Department, as one of the directors in the board. This is necessary to deal with the increased volume of financial responsibilities to be dealt by the board such as high value tenders, says the Bill moved by KN Nehru, Minister for Municipal Administration.

The Assembly passed the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Woman (Amendment Bill), 2025 by Chief Minister MK Stalin to incorporate Section 7C. This enables the issuance of “protection orders” to restrain accused individuals from contacting women they have allegedly harassed. The Bill can help prohibit all forms of communication like personal, oral, written, electronic, telephonic, or indirect if requested by the aggrieved person. The amendment also aims to include harassment through digital and electronic means.

The Criminal Laws (Tamil Nadu Amendment Bill), 2025 moved by Chief Minister MK Stalin was also passed. This seeks to amend the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, in their application to the State. The Bill proposed a minimum 14 years of rigorous imprisonment for a rape convict, up from the present 10 years. If the rapist is a member of the police force, it seeks to double the minimum rigorous imprisonment to 20 years. If the rape victim is a girl aged below 12, it calls for life term as the minimum punishment and death penalty as the maximum.