More than 24,000 trees felled illegally to widen canal: NGT

Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 16

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday held officers of the Punjab Forest Department responsible for illegal felling of 24,777 eucalyptus, sheesham and keekar trees to widen the 800-km-long Bist-Doab canal during the SAD-BJP rule in 2016.

The Rs 270-crore project to widen the canal had kicked up a row last year after foresters and environmentalists cried foul over trees being uprooted from a land strip (on both sides of the canal), classified as a protected forest.

The irrigation canal and its distributaries that meander through Nawanshahr and Jalandhar districts carry Sutlej water from Ropar headworks.

Delhi resident Nishant Kumar Alag had filed the petition following reports in these columns that highlighted flouting of rules by the Forest Department under pressure from the state government.

Observing that former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Kuldeep Kumar and former Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Nawanshahr, Jagdev Singh deliberately ignored the fact that the trees stood in the area demarked as protected forest, the tribunal said there was wilful violation of the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980. The Act required the department to take permission from the Ministry of Environment (MOEF) under the FCA.

The tribunal’s Double Bench, comprising Justice Raghuvendra S Rathore and member Satyawan Singh Garbyal, has directed the state to get the case investigated by an officer not below the rank of Additional Chief Secretary and fix responsibility on officers responsible for violation of the FCA. 

‘Norms flouted’

• Addl Chief Secy-rank officer to conduct probe, identify officials who flouted norms to illegally fell 24,777 trees in Punjab
• State govt and Forest Department to undertake afforestation on area equivalent to the forest area destructed