Punjab Forest Department fails to realise Rs 129.8 crore from Irrigation Department for axing trees

Tribune News Service

Rajmeet Singh

Chandigarh, July 23

The six-year-old case related to the illegal felling of 24,777 eucalyptus, sheesham and kikar trees to widen the 800-km-long Bist-Doab canal during the SAD-BJP government in 2016 is back to haunt the Forest Department.

The department has failed to realise Rs 129.81 crore as the cost of compensatory afforestation under Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) from the Irrigation Department that felled the trees on a forest area of around 107.25 hectares of land along the Bist-Doab Canal, the Comptroller Auditor General of India (CAG) has pointed out to the state government.

The Irrigation Department had cut the trees along the canal and its distributaries in Nawanshahr and Jalandhar divisions through the Punjab State Forest Development Corporation after seeking permission of the Forest Department.

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 the Sutlej water from the Ropar headworks.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT), in its 2018 orders, had also held that the then Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) and Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Nawanshahr, had deliberately ignored the fact that the trees stood in the area demarked as protected forest. The NGT 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 NGT had 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 the violation of the FCA. The inquiry was undertaken but it still remains inconclusive.

The CAG has pointed out that the PCCF ordered the Nawanshahr DFO in November 2019 to take action as per order of the NGT and submit the compliance report without any delay. However, the DFO did not initiate action to realise the cost of compensatory afforestation from the Irrigation Department.

Compensatory afforestation fund

• The amount was meant for compensatory plantation under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority.
• The Irrigation Department had felled the trees on a forest area of around 107.25 hectares along the canal

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