State tags saplings planted in various schemes under PM's campaign

Huballi: Karnataka forest department has issued directions to all the forest circle-level officials to tag every sapling planted, under various programmes and schemes, in their jurisdiction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious campaign of #Plant4mother.

This follows the campaign where people were asked to voluntarily plant a sapling in their mother’s or children’s name in their neighborhood, which received poor response.

On the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5, 2024, Modi had set an ambitious target for India to plant over 140 crore saplings by the end of March 2025. The Union government had asked Karnataka to plant four-crore saplings. However, till the December-end, Karnataka had responded by planting just 42 lakh saplings.

With the Union government “insisting” on increasing the numbers, the forest department was forced to tag all the saplings that they had planted in reserve forest, tiger reserves and other protected areas under the #plant4mother campaign in the website merilife.nic.in. As of now the state has tagged 1.56 crore saplings on the said website.

Volunteers were asked to plant these saplings on the highways, roadsides, schools, parks, in their neighborhood and other suitable places and nurture them as a mark of love, respect and honour for their own mothers and to also take a pledge for protecting trees and Mother Earth.

Education department, local governance bodies and the forest department were tasked to reach this target. However, in Karnataka the campaign received poor response.

“The motive of the campaign is good. It intends to halting and reversing land degradation, building drought resilience and preventing desertification. However, one fails to understand how tagging saplings planted under one scheme of the State government under #Plant4mother campaign will make any difference in increasing the green cover of the country. Moreover, the central government hasn’t allocated or released any additional funds for this campaign,” says a deputy conservator of forest, who requested not to be named.

He also fears that there is every possibility of duplication in saplings count.

Sources in Aranya Bhavan informed DH that one of the reasons for the Union government asking all the states to tag their afforestation programme under the #Plant4mother campaign is to present India’s achievement at the global stage.

“We are part of COP21 signatories. If we highlight that India planted over 140 crore saplings in a year the country can get better carbon credit,” said the sources.

In spite of “repeated instructions” from the central government, Karnataka may not achieve the 4 crore mark this year as the nurseries in the State do not have the required number of saplings. “On an average Karnataka produces around 1.25 crore to 1.5 crore saplings through forest department-run nurseries annually. For planting four-crore saplings, the department needs at least one year in advance communication so that we can collect those many seedlings,” said a senior officer in Aranya Bhavan.

‘Falsely taking credit’

Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre said the Union government was trying to falsely take credit for the plantation work done by the state.

“The Union government hasn’t given us a single paisa for this campaign. If the central government really has so much concern for increasing green cover, then it should release funds for all the states. Karnataka in 2023-24 has planted over 5.48 crore saplings and in 2024-25 over 3.42 crore saplings are being nurtured without any assistance from central government,” he said.