The Government on Friday increased overall budgetary allocation for the Union Environment Ministry by 20.27 per cent to Rs 3,111.20 crore, but the wildlife flagship schemes such as Project Tiger and Project Elephant saw no change in their allocation compared to last year. Also even though pollution is increasingly becoming a cause of concern across the country, fund for pollution abatement was cut down to half from RS 20 crore last year to RS 10 crore for 2019-20.
Also, at RS 100 crore, the 2019-20 allocation also remained the same as last year for the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the central pollution watchdog. The revised allocation for the year 2018-19 was RS 114.42 crore.
In the last fiscal, the Environment Ministry was allocated RS 2,586.67 crore. The current fiscal’s allocation of RS 350 crore for Project Tiger, an initiative for conserving the wildcats, and RS 30 crore for Project Elephant, which was launched to conserve the jumbos across the country, remain unchanged for 2019-20.
The interim budget, presented by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, raised the allocation for the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body under the Ministry for tiger conservation, to RS 10 crore for 2019-20 from RS 9 crore last fiscal.
The revised allocation for NTCA for 2018-19 was also RS 10 crore. The Animal Welfare Noard (AWB) got an increase of RS 2 crore in the budget. The Centre has allocated RS 12 crore for AWB for 2019-20. It was RS 10 crore in 2018-19.
The Budget for National Commission for Green India has been increased from RS 210 crore in 2018-19 to RS 240 crore in 2019-20.