Natarajan and DG forest at loggerheads

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and country top-most forest official and director general of Forest PJ Dalip Kumar are at loggerheads over forestry issues. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 25, 2012, 21:08:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and country top-most forest official and director general of Forest PJ Dalip Kumar are at loggerheads over forestry issues.

Natarajan on Wednesday rejected Kumar's proposal to set up two forest research centers in Delhi with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore from an afforestation fund monitored by a Supreme Court committee.

Kumar wanted the government to agree for setting up National Institute of Forestry and Natural Resources and Indian National Forest Documentation Centre for research in addition to Dehradun based Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education and Forest Survey of India. He had also sought one crore from the fund to organize Indian Forest Congress in Bangalore, which was also rejected.

The proposals were discussed at a meeting of ad-hoc committee of Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAMPA) headed by Natarajan on Wednesday.

The fund was started on directions of the Supreme Court, which wanted that the money collected for allowing diversion of forestland for projects by the central government should be used for rejuvenation of forests. There is about Rs 25,000 crore in Campa for the job.

According to official sources, the minister was of the view that these proposals were against the basic spirit of CAMPA as the money cannot be given only for regeneration of forests.

But, that has not happened as state governments have reduced their plan allocation for forestry claiming that the money would be available for the same from CAMPA. Campa was supposed to augment state government's efforts to protect forests and not as a substitute to plan funds,a senior ministry official said.

What has apparently irked the minister is that Campa funds are being sought for all purposes in name of forestry, which would dilute the basic purpose of setting up of the fund.

When contacted Natarjan refused to comment but the forest division officials said there was no money available with the government to set up these dedicated institutes and therefore, money was sought from Campa.

Earlier, Natarajan had overruled objections of Kumar for importing Cheetahs from Namabia for release in wild in Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.

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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