Rs 5000-cr afforestation plan okayed

Money should be utilised for providing employment, says apex court

The money will be released from the forest fund having a corpus of about Rs 11,400 crore.

The forest bench headed by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said: “The money should be utilised for providing employment to the unemployed people by providing minimum wages for afforestation projects.”

There should be proper monitoring and no deadline should be fixed for such projects, the bench cautioned in the presence of Attorney General Gulam E Vahanvati. It also clarified that the money would be utilised, besides the NREGA projects already on in villages.
The project guidelines were discussed in the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) under the supervision of Environment and Forest Minister Jayaram Ramesh.

Senior Advocate Harish Salve, appearing as amicus curie, submitted that the capital amount collected as net present value (NPV) for diverting the forest land since 2002 will be kept in a fixed deposit with a public sector bank.

During the last seven years, the fund collected by the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) has grown to Rs 11,400 crore with interest during the intervening period, Salve said. The states will get their shares from the released money according to their contribution to the funds. At least 5 per cent of the released amount to state CAMPA would be spent on monitoring, evaluation and implementation of the schemes. State CAMPA, the state level body to execute the projects, will comprise a governing body chaired by state chief minister. The other members in the governing body will be state chief secretary, chief conservator of forests and other high-level officers. The states have been asked to submit report before the apex court every six months on the progress of the projects in the states.

DH News Service