Section 28: Formation of village-forests.

(1) The State Government may assign to any village-community the rights of Government to or over any land which has been constituted a reserved forest, and may cancel such assignment. All forests so assigned shall be called village-forests.

(2) The State Government may make rules for regulating the management of village-forests, prescribing the conditions under which the community to which any such assignment is made may be provided with timber or other forest-produce or pasture, and their duties for the protection and improvement of such forest.

(3) All the provisions of this Act relating to reserved forests shall (so far as they are not inconsistent with the rules so made) apply to village-forests.

STATE AMENDMENTS Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh (UTs).— Section 28.-

(i) in sub-section (1), for the word “reserved forest”, substitute the words “reserved forest or declared a protected forest or is a land which has been entered in settlement records as khalsa land”; (ii) in sub-section (3) after the words “reserved forests”, insert the words “or protected forests, as the case may be”. [Vide the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Adaptation of Central Laws) Order, 2020, notification No. S.O. 1123(E) dated (18-3-2020).]