Khata kans, are the common lands(forests) of the village who were supposed to use the same for fire wood, extraction of medicinal products, and many other NTFP’s. These patch of forests provided perennial resource to the villagers. Since ages, the head of the village was responsible for maintaining these Khata kans.  But, in the current years, influential community claims the ownership of these lands, altering the landscape from forested to Agriculture/Horticulture.
Case Study: the current study focuses on the assessment of Khata Kan of Nargodu-Koppa Village Survey number 43, Sagara Taluk, Shimoga District, Karnataka. Nargodu village is located in Sagara taluk about 12 kilometers from Sagara City. Nargodu Revenue map with suevery numbers is as depicted in Figure 1.  Survey number 43 of Nargodu-Koppa village has an area of 24 Acres 18 Guntas. Spatial landscape dynamics since 1972 is as depicted in Figure 2. Temporal Satellite imageries doesn’t indicate any changes in survey number 43 until 2016 i.e., Forest had remained intact, whereas in 2017 forest has started to degrade through large scale tree cutting activities.

Fig. 1: Nargodu Village

Land records accessed from Bhoomi web page indicates that Survey number 43 was Khata Kan unitll 2009, which was further in name of Bangaramma and Devaraju since 2012 till date (Figure 3, Table 1) due to irrational allotments by the senseless district administration and local politicians.
Table 1: Nargodu Land records

Fig. 2: Land use dynamics (24.08 acre forest lands)

2000 - 2001

2001 – 2009 (15 May 2009)

2009 (15 May to 1 October)

2009 until 10 August 2011

10 August 2011 till date (2017)

Fig. 3: Mutation Status – Bhoomi Land Records
(Source: https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in , Accessed on 13 December 2017)

The current owner of the land claims that the land is being used for growing crops such as ginger, jowar etc. Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (R.T.C) doesn’t indicate any crop being grown in the region (Figure 4) and temporal remote sensing data (and field investigations) highlights the presence of good patch of native forests.

Fig. 4: Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (R.T.C) – Bhoomi Land Records

(Source: https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in , Accessed on 13 December 2017)
Field work carried out at Sagara on 28 November 2017 and GPS track is indicated in Figure 5. Field work photo graphs of field investigations are depicted in Figure 8. Field work shows that survey number 43 is a pristine forest having about 84 species of trees, 36 species of shrubs, 21 species of climbers (Table 2), conforming the presence of pristine forests, which is clandestinely alloted to an individual for private activities while depriving the community their right to use the forest for livelihood.

Fig. 5: Survey on 28 November 2017

FENCE
TREE FELLING
REGENERATION
Glimpse of mature natural vegetation

Fig. 6: Field work Photographs