Karnataka gets Rs 1,350 cr green fund from Centre

The central government has released more than Rs 47,000 crore from a special green kitty to 27 states, which would utilise the funds to create more forest and tree cover in the respective states.

Out of Rs 47,436 crore, disbursed by Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Karnataka receives Rs 1350.37 crore while Andhra Pradesh gets Rs 1734.81 crore, according to an official press note.

The other two states received less ending at the bottom of the table with Tamil Nadu and Kerala getting Rs 113.42 crore and Rs 81.59 crore respectively.

The money comes from the dedicated Compensatory Afforestation Fund set up under the instruction of the Supreme Court, which in 2001 asked the Centre to create a separate kitty where every project proponent requiring forest land would have to deposit an equivalent amount of money before they start working.

A separate authority known as Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) was also created to manage the corpus, which swelled over the years.

In 2009, the Supreme Court permitted release of Rs 1,000 crore every year to the states and union territories for compensatory afforestation and other activities.

Five years later, the apex court approved release of 10% of total deposit of states in the fund from interest accrued on the deposits.

But with the states asking for more money from the CAMPA fund, the Environment ministry, after detailed deliberations with the Comptroller and Auditor General, Finance ministry and other stakeholders, drafted the rules to utilse the CAMPA fund in 2018 and notified them in January 2019 with approval of the Supreme Court.

Once the rules were notified, an amount of Rs 54,685 crore was released from the corpus for disbursement.

With Rs 5,934 crore, Odisha was biggest CAMPA beneficiary, followed by Chhattishgarh (Rs 5,792 crore) and Madhya Pradesh (5,196 crore). Jharkhand comes at the fourth position at Rs 4,158 crore, while Maharashtra gets Rs 3,844 crore and Telengana receives Rs 3,110 crore.

“Important activities on which the fund will be utilised are compensatory afforestation, catchment area treatment, wildlife management, assisted natural regeneration, forest fire prevention and control operations, soil and moisture conservation, improvement of wildlife habitat, management of biological diversity and biological resources and research in forestry," Javadekar said.