*Funds meant for forest protection used to purchase ACs
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 29: In what could be termed as insensitivity towards the green gold wealth, only one per cent of forest land has been demarcated in Jammu district by the Forest Department thereby leaving 99 per cent area prone to encroachment by the land grabbers. Moreover, 123 saw mills are operating within the prohibited area in contravention of the ban imposed by the Supreme Court and incident of illicit felling and consequently the outstanding damages cases have been increasing year after year due to the slackness of the Forest Department officers.
These startling revelations have also been made by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in its report whereby it has painted the gloomy picture about the approach towards green wealth of the Jammu district despite the fact that it is the responsibility of the Forest Department to look after the management of forest areas, evacuation of unauthorized occupants of forest land and rehabilitation of degraded forest area.
“The Jammu district spread over a geographical area of about 3097 square kilometers has a forest area of 767square kilometers (25 per cent) against the norm of 1022 square kilometer (33 per cent) prescribed under National Forest Policy”, the CAG said, adding “out of this only one per cent of the forest land had been demarcated so far due to which the land near and around Jammu district especially Jammu city is prone to encroachment by the land grabbers”.
In order to have adequate plantation material to raise plantation in the degraded forest area, the Forest Department had developed six nurseries in Purmandal, Sidhra, Jhajjar Kotli, Muthi, Nathal and Jagdambay areas of the district but the CAG found performance of all these nurseries very poor and the production of plants ranged between 4 and 35 per cent. However, Forest Department attributed poor performance of the nurseries to the non-availability of sufficient funds.
“The survival rate of plants planted during 2006-11 was very low as out of 5,60,885 plants planted during the period only 3,14,180 (56 per cent) survived and the high degree of mortality of plants led to the amount of Rs 0.15 crore spent on plantation of 2,46,705 plants becoming wasteful”, the report said, adding “the reply of the DFO that the mortality was due to continued dry spell was not acceptable as necessary precautions should have been taken by the department to mitigate the problem”.
The rehabilitation of degraded forests envisages checking by plantation, construction of check dams, water harvesting structures and natural regeneration but despite spending Rs 1.69 crore during 2006-10 there was no reduction of degraded area and it remained static at 2,557 hectares, the report pointed out, adding as per the State Forest Conservation Act, 1997, forests were to be raised over degraded area equal to twice the area diverted for non-forest purpose but against 1,883.23 hectares of forest land diverted for non-forest purposes no land was brought under forest cover.
Further, the CAG detected that possession of land was transferred to the user agencies without clearing the payments from them in contravention of the rules as a result of which an amount of Rs 56.07 crore was outstanding against various agencies on account of compensation for the period ranging between 6 to 288 months.
Stating that incidence of illicit felling and consequently the outstanding damage cases increased year after year, the CAG said, “the number of unsettled cases rose from 392 to 450 during 2007-11 and this highlighted the apathy on the part of the department in settling the cases”, adding “the increase in the forest damage cases should be seen in the light of the fact that establishment of saw mills within eight kilometer of the forest area continued to be in operation despite imposition of ban on such establishments by the Supreme Court”.
The report said that 123 out of 178 saw mills operating in the Jammu Forest Division were operated within the prohibited area in contravention of the court orders, which facilitated forest damages.
In the CAG report, it has also been pointed out that under the 12th Finance Commission Award, works of renovation and repair of fencing, construction of fire line, plantation in gaps, production and rehabilitation of forests, demarcation of forests, development of infrastructure for field staff were to be taken up. Similarly, under Compensatory Afforestation Scheme most threatened areas were to be treated, maintained and established to compensate the loss of tree cover and to restore the degraded forests to their natural status.
However, Rs 0.11 crore were utilized on procurement of generators, invertors, batteries, erection of transformers, construction works of office complex, air conditioners, furniture in violation of guidelines. “Mis-utilization of funds meant for plantation, protection and rehabilitation of forests defeated the purpose of the schemes”, the CAG report concluded.
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