The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has extended its interim stay on Punjab Government’s Policy for Approval and Regularisation of Low Impact Green Habitats (LIGH), 2025, preventing any approvals or regularisations in areas abutting forests. The next date of hearing has been scheduled for July 21.The extension comes despite the state government’s amendment to the policy notified on April 7 which removed the Forest Department’s monitoring mandate and references to commercial building rules. In an affidavit filed with the tribunal, Additional Secretary, Housing and Urban Development, Sukhjeet Pal Singh attached the amended policy issued by Principal Secretary, Housing, Vikas Garg. The state claimed the changes addressed the inconsistencies raised by the petitioners.The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), in its affidavit, has specified that the LIGH policy should not extend to protected areas and their eco-sensitive zones. However, the Punjab Government has remained silent on the applicability of the proposed eco-sensitive zone around the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary. “Large chunks of land in Mohali district owned by the intended beneficiaries of the LIGH policy would come under the eco-sensitive zone. The draft of the proposed zone is pending with the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change,” said a forest official.Environmentalists view the amendment as a tactical move to blunt the legal challenge without withdrawing the core policy. They warned that even “low-impact” development in the fragile Kandi belt of the Shivalik hills, from Mohali to Pathankot, could accelerate soil erosion, fragment wildlife corridors, deplete groundwater and destabilise slopes in a region already facing ecological stress.The amendment deleted portions of Condition 11 that had linked the policy to the Punjab Eco-Tourism Policy, 2009, and mandated monitoring by the Forest Department. References in Condition 18 to commercial building rules were also modified or removed. However, the government has not clarified the applicability of the Eco-Tourism Policy 2018 in the delisted areas abutting forests.Forest experts pointed out that the state appears to have overlooked instructions from the MoEF&CC that land de-listed under the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA), 1900, should continue to be treated as forest for the purposes of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Such land, they said, could only be used for bona fide agricultural purposes and sustainable livelihood, and not for commercial activities.The NGT had granted an ad-interim stay on the original policy on December 18, 2025, following petitions alleging it violated Supreme Court directions in the TN Godavarman case. Those directions restricted the use of land delisted from the PLPA — spanning roughly 55,000 hectares across Mohali, Rupnagar, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, Hoshiarpur and Gurdaspur — to bona fide agricultural and sustainable livelihood purposes only.Petitioners, including members of the Council of Engineers and the Public Action Committee such as Kapil Dev, Ganesh Khurana and Mohit Jain argued that the policy was effectively designed to regularise illegal farmhouses — many allegedly belonging to influential politicians, bureaucrats and others — while opening the door to further construction in biodiversity-rich zones abutting reserved forests.The matter has been clubbed with related petitions concerning illegal structures in the Shivaliks. Parallel proceedings are also pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court where the NGT’s jurisdiction over the policy has been questioned. The controversy underscores the ongoing tension between development pressures in the Shivalik foothills and the need to safeguard green cover in the Kandi region.