JOIN USThe Andhra Pradesh Forest Department has secured the approval of the Union government to auction through the web 4,000 tonnes of confiscated red sandalwood, which is expected to bring an estimated Rs 1,000 crore in revenue.
“We will call for global tenders to e-auction the red sanders within a week,” State Forest Minister Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy said on Monday.
In the last two years, the forest department has impounded from smugglers around 8,584 tonne of highly-valuable red sanders. With the forest department facing a shortage of staff, protecting the sanders had become a Herculean task for authorities.
Now, however, forest authorities can rest easy knowing that almost half of the stock of red sanders will be taken off their hands through the auction. The Forest Department estimates that an initial sum of Rs 1,000 crore could be earned through auctioning 4,000 tonne of red sandalwood. Each tonne commands a price of Rs 25 lakh in the international market, a senior official in the department pointed out, and added that the upset price would be Rs 10 lakh per tonne.
Reddy said that besides the Tirumala Tirupathi region, one crore hectares of forest land in the state could be used to cultivate red sanders and bring huge revenue to state. Andhra Pradesh has five lakh hectares of red sandalwood plantation in Chittoor, an asset that could be used to develop the newly-formed state.
Smuggling of red sanders has become so rampant that it has even drawn the involvement of international mafia. The trees are widely grown in the Chittoor, Kadapa and Nellore districts of Andhra Pradesh, but its sale is controlled by the Government of India.
In the last few years, the Centre had not cleared the sale of red sanders, despite huge demands from China and overseas. The forest minister announced that the state would seek further permission to sell the remaining stock after a few months.
Meanwhile the state government has launched a manhunt for notorious red sanders smuggler Gangi Reddy, who allegedly masterminded the claymore mine blast targeted at N Chandrababu Naidu, the present Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, near Alipiri in 2003. The police believe that Gangi Reddy has escaped to Malaysia.