Senior BJP leader and former Forest Minister Thakur Rup Singh on Tuesday expressed shock and surprise over the revival of the old policy of timber distribution (TD) system by the Congress Government. He termed it as an anti-forest policy, which had done colossal destruction to the forest wealth in the hill State for decades turning green valleys into grey and barren hills.
Thakur said under the TD system full grown deodar trees used to be given to the right-holders at a nominal price of Rs2 to Rs5. It was also an open secret, he said, that mostly the TD timber used to be smuggled or sold in black market.He said political parties did not dare to change this system for fear of losing votes, but the BJP took a daring decision in the interests of the State in the wake of regularly diminishing green cover in Himachal Pradesh. "By reversing the TD policy the Congress had done an irreparable damage to the forest wealth," he bemoaned.
Thakur lamented that the Congress Government had unfortunately ventured to restore the old policy to the detriment of the green valleys of Himachal Pradesh.He also questioned the claim of the Forest Minister that the population of the monkeys in the State had gone down by about 80,000. The fact, he said was that the number of monkeys was multiplying abnormally and it had made the life of the people a living hell.
He said sterilising the monkeys was an ‘exercise in futility’ and criminal wastage of money and time. Culling or exporting was the only practical solution of the problem, he added.
Thakur said the most alarming fallout of the menace of monkeys was that farmers had stopped growing maize in thousands of acres of land in Mandi, Bilspur, Hamirpur and other districts of the State. Mandi district which once used to be the largest producer of maize which was purchased by poultry units of Punjab and Haryana and Rajasthan has stopped growing maize and its production had now been reduced by over 90 per cent. The sterilization of moneys had proved a dismal failure.