Forest funds unused: CAG

Sep 07, 2013 |

Age Correspondent

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) came down heavily on the environment ministry for non-utilisation of Compensatory Afforest-ation (Campa) Fund, which grew from `1,200 to `23,608 crore between 2006-12.

The CAG pointed out that under CAMPA, the Sasan Power Ltd in Madhya Pradesh had to provide an equivalent of 1,384.96 hectares of land for compensatory afforestation.
Unfortunately, the Madhya Pradesh chief secretary issued a certificate of non-availability of non-forest land in Sidh district, thereby, exempting Sasan Power Ltd from providing the land which was in violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980.
It also criticised the UP government in August 2007 of changing the status of reserve forest land measuring 1,083 hectares in Sonbhadra district and handing it over to JP Associates Ltd for the establishment of a cement plant and for mining purposes. The environment ministry also approved the diversion of 17.84 hectares of forest land in favour of Elray Minerals and Company with the provision of providing non-forest land for CAMPA.
But the company was subsequently exempted from providing non forest land the audit report pointed out..
The CAG also highlighted that 1.55 lakh hectares of forest land has been encroached upon just in six states primarily Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Assam.
From the `2,925.65 crore of compensatory afforestation funds released by CAMPA during 2009-12, only `1,775.84 crore was utilised. Utilisation rates varied between 50 to 60 per cent in different states with Meghalaya ( 100 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh ( 91 per cent), Bihar ( 77 per cent) Tripura ( 68 per cent) Chhattisgarh ( 67 per cent ). Even Delhi was not able to use 63 per cent of its CAMPA funds.
The CAG highlighted that since its inception in 2006, CAMPA has not submitted its audited accounts.
The Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority of 2004 has not been operationalised to date which is why it fails to operate in an effective manner.

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