N. Paul Vasanthakumar, J.

These appeals are filed by the writ petitioners, who are registered as forest lessees with the Forest Department of J&K State. The writ petitioners had secured various forest leases in Jammu Division of the State by validly executing the lease agreements. While they were working in their respective lease areas, unprecedented and heavy snowfall took place in February/march, 1979 resulting in heavy damage to the forest crop of the State and even in the adjoining State of Himachal Pradesh. In July, 1979, the government of Jammu and Kashmir with a view to salvage the damaged trees and saving the standing trees from potential fire hazards is stated to have taken a decision to mark and handover all such damaged and fallen trees to the working lessees in their respective leased areas/compartment as well as adjoining/adjacent compartments by marking and handing over for extraction of the lessees holding their leases in the adjoining areas. The writ petitioners were asked to execute supplementary agreement in respect of the adjoining/adjacent compartment for handing over to them to extract the damaged marked trees from the adjoining areas and also made the