DEHRADUN: The response to a Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed that around 12,81,397 hectares of the country’s forests have encroached.
Quizzed on the issue, Siddhant Das, director general of forest and special secretary, Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change, said, “Encroachment is a state subject. The Union government has not role in it and states have to reclaim the land lost to encroachment.”
Madhya Pradesh tops the list with 5,34,717.28 hectares of forest land under encroachment, followed by Assam at 3,17,215.39 hectares and Odisha with 78,505.08 hectares.
Uttarakhand isn’t too far behind, with 10,649.11 hectares of forest land under encroachment.
The RTI application was filed by Akash Vashishtha, an environmentalist who opposed the lavish wedding ceremony organised by Gupta brothers, South Africa-based tycoons, at Auli earlier this year and has flagged several environmental issues dogging the state in various courts and National Green Tribunal.
Among the issue he has raised are pollution of the Naini lake and rampant use of plastic.
The activist said the ministry did not provide any data on the status of the country’s forests at the time of independence, saying that it is not available with the Forest Survey of India.
The ministry, he said, further states that the primary responsibility of protection of forests lies with the States/UTs and the onus of acting against encroachers also lies with the states.
“India’s commitment to create an additional carbon sink, to free itself of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by extending its forest and tree cover, seems an uphill task,” Vashishtha, an environmentalist and lawyer based in Ghaziabad, said.
In its response to the RTI query, the ministry concerned refused to take names of the encroached forests or provide their location, district-wise data or to what extent have these encroachments been cleared.
It also didn’t shed light on the nature of encroachments or the forest cover in each state since 1947, saying, “The first India State of Forest Report was published in 1987. So the forest data of 1947 is not available in Forest Survey of India,” said the ministry in its response to the RTI query. India has around 7,08,273 sq km area under forest cover.