Forest bureaucracy hits back at FAC members

Under attack for shoddy work in clearing forest projects, the forest bureaucracy has hit back terming the non-official members in the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) -mandated to examine proposals for diversion of forestland - as foreign agents and having a conflict of interest.

Updated on: Oct 9, 2011, 23:27:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Under attack for shoddy work in clearing forest projects, the forest bureaucracy has hit back terming the non-official members in the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) -mandated to examine proposals for diversion of forestland - as foreign agents and having a conflict of interest.

Three non-official members of FAC - Mahesh Rangarajan, Ullas Karanth and Amita Bavaskar - had accused Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officials in the environment ministry of favouring private project proponents in getting forest clearance by withholding key ecology related information.

The letter had upset IoFS officials, who believed it was a campaign by NGOs to malign their service.

Hitting back, VK Bahuguna, director of Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) and president of Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officers association, said the problem with the FAC was appointment of non-official members from foreign funded NGOs having conflict of interest.

Bahuguna, who had worked as inspector general forests in the ministry, said that in the past, the non-official members in the FAC used to be experts in the field of mining or water or power or forestry.

"The present FAC consists of three non-official members who have no exposure in forestry or main sectors requiring forest lands, except one who is working in a very specialised field of wildlife and thus has very limited relevance to forestry clearance requirements," he said, in his response to letter by FAC's non-official members.

Accusing the non-official members of being biased and trying to cover their lack of understanding, the association said that these members had never recorded their dissent on the decisions of FAC on inadequacy of information.

"We as professional foresters would like to emphasise that enough information is provided in the factsheet of proposals for taking decision," the association said, terming their views as that of activists and not experts.

Supporting the present working style of FAC as an "excellent example of transparency", the association said that the work of the committee had gone down because large number of posts of IFS officers were vacant.

The association, however, ignored the fact that the FAC secretariat had failed to put the agenda or the minutes of the meeting on the ministry's website on time.

The association had asked Natarajan to revamp the FAC by hiring expert non-official members and filling up the vacant posts in the ministry forest division. It also wanted Forest Survey of India to be part of FAC to provide requisite information on forests at the meetings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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