Shortfall in Green India Mission due to poor financial planning: CAG report

Poor financial planning and weak alignment with existing state and Central schemes led to major shortfalls in implementing the Green India Mission, a new Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report has found

Published on: Aug 14, 2026, 08:56:38 IST

By Jasjeev Gandhiok, New Delhi

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Poor financial planning and weak alignment with existing state and Central schemes led to major shortfalls in implementing the Green India Mission, a new Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report has found.

The mission, part of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), aims to increase India’s tree and forest cover while improving their quality and ecosystem services.

“The absence of convergence, central to the implementation strategy of the Green India Mission (GIM), was evident across all institutional levels,” said the CAG audit report, tabled in Parliament on August 12. It found that the mission also lacked alignment with existing schemes like CAMPA, MGNREGS and other Central and state afforestation initiatives.

The audit covered GIM interventions in 16 states and Union territories for which the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had approved physical and financial targets between 2015-16 and 2024-25.

The mission fell significantly short of its targets. Against a target of improving forest cover quality across 1.4 million hectares, improvement was observed in only 0.11384 million hectares – a shortfall of 91.87%.

Similarly, forest cover increased across only 0.03409 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares, a shortfall of 97.57%.

“Furthermore, no state, except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015–2025,” the report said, linking this to poor financial management.

The CAG also found poor coordination among government programmes. Schemes such as the Nagar Van Yojana and School Nursery Yojana operated in silos, while the Ministry did not receive consolidated Annual Plans of Operation (APOs) from states and Union territories.

The audit found that only six of 68 sampled APOs were received by the ministry before the start of the financial year, while none was approved on time. APOs set out the annual physical and financial targets for forestry, afforestation and climate-adaptation activities.

The report also found that landscapes with low or moderate vulnerability were selected over areas more vulnerable to climate change, despite vulnerability being a key criterion for the mission.

“The lack of convergence led to non-attainment in securing ₹10,600 crore in proposed funding support. Further, against an outlay of ₹2,000 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs from the 12th Plan for the initial four years of the Scheme alongwith ₹400 crore from 13th Finance Commission grants towards states share, only ₹1,149.14 crore (47.88%), was received through budgetary support during 10 years of implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jasjeev Gandhiok
Jasjeev Gandhiok is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, where he covers environment, climate change, the clean energy transition and wildlife at the National Bureau. Gandhiok has over a decade of experience in journalism and is based in Delhi. He has reported extensively on Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). This includes the region's air pollution woes, a polluted Yamuna and on urban wildlife still thriving in the region. He joined HT in October 2021. Prior to that, he had five-year stint at The Times of India in Delhi, where he also covered Delhi, with a focus on environment and wildlife. Gandhiok has covered some recent events around the Capital too, ranging from the farmers' protests, the northeast Delhi riots and the CAA-NRC protests, reporting from the ground on all of these. He also travels across the country to report on how environment and climate change impact everyday life, while also writing on endangered species. His reports in 2019 on toxic leachate from Delhi's landfills led to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) taking suo motu cognisance and ultimately asking the state government to start bio-mining to flatten and remove all three landfills in the capital. He also closely tracks the implementation of government policies on climate, renewable energy and environmental protection. His focus remains on impactful, public-interest journalism which explains how environmental decisions affect people's everyday lives.Read More

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