Official doctors Natarajan’s note, transferred

A senior Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer has been sent back to his parent cadre for allegedly manipulating documents to give forest clearance to a hydel project in Himachal Pradesh. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Sep 21, 2011, 23:09:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A senior Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer has been sent back to his parent cadre for allegedly manipulating documents to give forest clearance to a hydel project in Himachal Pradesh.

On environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan's orders, the officer has been sent to Himachal Pradesh after he allegedly photocopied her note and used to it approve a totally unrelated hydel project.

An inquiry has been ordered against the official of the rank of assistant inspector general of forests. HT has withheld his name as vigilance inquiry against is yet to commence and efforts to contact him failed.

The minister in the first week of September received a letter from Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal regarding relaxation of conditions imposed on two hydro-projects approved by former environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

Ramesh had approved two projects of the five projects in Ravi river basin in Chamba district of the state with the condition that no work will start till the river basin study is completed and its recommendations are complied with. The other three projects were kept pending till the study was completed.

Dhumal requested Natarajan to relax the condition saying that the locals were facing problems and power projects were urgently required.

The minister prepared a hand written note regarding two approved projects and marked it with Dhumal's letter to the official. As per the ministry's preliminary inquiry, the official called for the file and asked his subordinates to get photocopies of the minister's note and Dhumal's letter done.

On September 9, he allegedly attached the photocopies in the file of an unapproved hydro project in Ravi basin and wrote that the competent authority had approved the project.

Sources said Natarajan learnt about the development late last week. Although the minister wanted to suspend him, she relented on the insistence of other senior officials.

Natarajan refused to comment on the issue.

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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