for as long as the bani grove has been around villagers have helped safeguard it with the help of a robust community management system so successful have they been as custodians that the grove has remained out of bounds for real estate and the hills here have been prudently used for fodder and firewood and used for grazing by the pastoral gujjars who know the lie of the land this community believes the bani is protected by the benign spirit of gudariya baba who lived in the village long long ago they say any attempt to cut or even trim trees invites his retributionwe dont remember any incident when trees were felled by the locals in the bani said fateh singh a 90yearold resident of mangar firewood collection was restricted to certain areas and only thin branches were allowed to be cut to maintain tree structure and a healthy and full tree canopy singh addedthe ownership of the sacred grove slipped out of the hands of the community only after the intervention of outsiders and the boom in the real estate sector sadly there have been no attempts by successive state governments to protect this forest from the designs of land sharks the lie of the landof the 4262 acres of land in mangar village around 3810 acres fall under the category of gair mumkin pahar uncultivable land because this stony hilly terrain was uncultivable agricultural activity hasnt been possible here and thus the land hasnt provided any revenue to the state only around 1132 acres in the village are notified under sections 4 and 5 of the punjab land preservation act plpa 1900 and 1116 acres are marked under the category of aravali plantation plantation carried out in haryana under the european unionfunded aravalli project during the 1990sthe entire gair mumkin pahar uncultivable hill tract is today privately owned leaving aside only half an acre for the village panchayat this is because during the 1980s the area was carved up into oneacre plots by the haryana revenue authority and villagers were forced to sell their share of land over the years the land was then sold and resoldin 198586 at the end of the chakbandi consolidation process the aravali hills of mangar village were divided into oneacre plots on the shajra revenue map and these were allotted to individual shareholders it was unfortunate that even the sacred forest of the mangar bani was not set aside from the pool of land that could be sold chetan agarwal an environmental analyst said the consolidation act a law to end fragmentation of agricultural fields and panchayat common lands was illegally used to accumulate large landholdings these landholdings were then sold to individuals he addedno longer hallowed groundwhile attempts by the haryana government to sell the bani to developers have drawn sharp criticism from villagers and environmentalists doubts have persisted over the status of mangar banithe authorities have never identified the bani as a protected area there was no reference to mangar