Mumbai: The Maharashtra forest department has been ineffective in compensatory afforestation in the state, revealed the audit for 2012-18 by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). While the state diverted 65,363 hectares of forest land for 1,671 projects as on March 2018, the information of non-forest land (NFL) or degraded forest land provided for compensatory afforestation was not available with the higher level officers of the forest department.
The audit revealed that 1,671 cases of forestland's diversion were neither consolidated by APCCF cum Nodal Officer nor available with chief conservator of forests. “
There was no information sharing between APCCF cum Nodal officer, responsible for processing of forest land diversion cases and APCCF (CAMPA), responsible for taking up afforestation work in alternate lands identified at the time of approval of diversion cas-es using Compensatory Afforestation Fund Mana-gement and Planning Authority (CAMPA) funds,” read the report.
Meanwhile, when compensatory afforestation works were executed on alternate lands, it was observed that necessary approvals of Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC) were not taken always.
“MoEF’s stipulations in respect of conditional works were also not followed. Thus, CAMPA funds could not be used economically and efficiently as delays in approvals had resulted in cost escalation which was not recovered from the user agencies and CAMPA funds had to be used,” the CAG report said.
“The delays in approval could be also due to cases pending in courts on the matter and due to priorities given to the public work. However, at rare times only the cost have escalated,” said a senior forest official.
The CAG also termed the CAMPA scheme ineffective in many cases where diversion of fund was made for inadmissible purposes and unsuitable works.
It stated that there were unreconciled differences between amounts released by state CAMPA and that shown as received by the circles. There were deficiencies in conducting inspections at field level resulting in weak monitoring thereby resulting in poor execution of works.
