HYDERABAD: Telangana government has spent Rs 1,700 crore till now to make the state greener as part of the Telangana Ku Haritha Haram, the third phase of which will be launched on Wednesday.
In 2015-16, only 16 crore saplings could be planted due to poor monsoon and in 2016-17, the state government’s forest and other departments could manage to plant about 31 crore saplings. This year, the state government plans to plant 40 crore saplings.
However, TRS government is far away from achieving the target of planting 230 crore saplings, of which 120 crore were planned to be planted outside forest areas, 100 crores in forest areas and 10 crore in areas under Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority areas.
This means that government will have to ensure that 143 crore saplings are planted to achieve the target of 230 crore saplings before 2019 when it’s term will come to an end, which is a highly unlikely target to be achieved.Going as per claims of the government that 53 pc of 47 crore saplings it planted in previous two phases survived, it means that around 25 crore new saplings have been added to TS’s landscape since the launch of TKHH in 2015.
GHMC and HMDA which have a joint responsibility of planting around 10 crore saplings are also far from achieving their target. In the previous phases, urban local bodies planted only 1.5 crore saplings. This year, combined target of sapling plantations by GHMC and HMDA is 2.5 crore which means it will be left with a target of planting a massive six crore saplings in just one year. To involve the participation of residents, GHMC will distribute 94 lakh saplings in five zones and around 50,000 saplings will be planted at institutions.