The Tamil Nadu Government appointed senior IAS officer Atulya Misra to probe the circumstances leading to the forest fire as well as trekking activity without proper permission from forest department in forest fire prone area. He has been asked to submit the report within two months. While the Chennai Trekking Club, organisers of the trekking, claimed that the expedition was undertaken after getting Government clearance and paying mandatory fees to the Forest Department, the Tamil Nadu Government was firm in its stance that it has not allowed anybody to organise adventure sports like trekking in the area.
The Chennai Trekking Club in a release issued through the social media claimed that it had made payments to the official at the check point who allowed the trekkers inside the reserve forest.
But the Tamil Nadu Forest Department on late Tuesday suspended Jayasingh, a forester attached to the Bodinayakannoor Range for allowing trekkers into the forests.
D Prabhu, proprietor, Tour De India Holidays, an Erode based company , said that he had led a team of 12 trekkers into the forest on Saturday after paying Jayasingh Rs 200 per person. Some of the local media had reported that Jayasingh had made the organisers to transfer the money into his personal bank account to facilitate the entry of the trekkers into the forest.
But the most startling disclosure was made by Dr K Sivan, chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation. According to the ISRO boss, the National Remote Sensing Centre which is keeping track of forest fires all over the country sends text messages to the officials of the forest departments of all States with the help of Forest Survey of India. "But Tamil Nadu Government has not yet shared the mobile phone numbers of its forest officials either with the NRSC or the FSI. Had they shared the contact numbers of their officials, we could have sent SMS alerts which inturn would have reduced the disaster response time,” said Dr Sivan.
The mystery behind the CTC continued as Peter Van Geit, the Belgian citizen behind the club remained elusive. The website of the club is silent about its office bearers and their contact addresses. “This is disturbing. I wanted to undertake a trekking expedition but the CTC is silent about the people behind the organisation and hence I opted out from becoming a member,” said K P lalchand, an entrepreneur who is seriously into adventure sports.