NEW DELHI: The Green India Mission increased forest cover across just 0.03409 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares over the past decade, falling short by 97.57%, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) flagged in a report tabled in Parliament on Thursday.
The afforestation programme has fallen short of its forest cover targets over the past decade due to poor planning, weak coordination and chronic underfunding, the federal auditor said in its report.
The federal auditor examined the Green India Mission across 16 states and Union Territories from 2015-16 to 2024-25. The scheme, run by the Environment Ministry, aims to expand forest and tree cover, improve ecosystem services and boost forest based livelihoods.
The auditor found that the programme achieved just 0.11384 million hectares of forest quality improvement against a target of 1.4 million hectares, a shortfall of 91.87%.
An increase in forest cover was recorded on only 0.03409 million hectares against the same 1.4 million hectare target, a shortfall of 97.57%.
The auditors said the scheme suffered from a lack of coordination with other afforestation initiatives such as CAMPA and the rural jobs guarantee programme MGNREGS, as well as schemes including Nagar Van Yojana and School Nursery Yojana, which operated in isolation.
A bottom up approach to selecting project areas was not followed, and landscapes with low to moderate climate vulnerability were sometimes chosen over more vulnerable ones, the report said.
The auditor also stated that against an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs from the 12th Plan for the initial four years of the scheme, along with Rs 400 crore from 13th Finance Commission grants towards the states' share, only Rs 1,149.14 crore (47.88 per cent) was received through budgetary support during the 10 years of implementation from 2015-16 to 2024-25.
Internal controls were also weak, as eight states and Union Territories did not maintain Annual Accounts. Where accounts were prepared, they often remained unaudited or showed discrepancies against subsidiary records.
Furthermore, no state, except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015-2025.
Improper planning on the part of ICFRE regarding the maintenance and upkeep of the flux towers installed in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh led to the infrastructure being left idle for the quantification of carbon sequestration, despite an expenditure of Rs 3.50 crore.
Monitoring was deficient at most prescribed levels, with 14 states failing to provide the required public web links for transparency.
Audit evaluations revealed inflated data and overstated achievements due to non validated KML files, while GIS analysis showed that 70 per cent of sampled sites had no noticeable changes attributable to the Green India Mission.