Despite abundant availability of Revenue land in Chhattisgarh for Compensatory Afforestation (CA), user agencies were granted permissions for diversion of forest land with the condition to carry out Compensatory Afforestation on degraded forest land, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has observed in its recent report for year ended March, 2013.
The CAG conducted the audit during September 2012 to June 2013 which revealed a number of deficiencies relating to non realization/short realization of the cost of Compensatory Afforestation and Net Present Value (NPV), violation of Forest Conservation Act in forest land diversion cases and irregular, doubtful, excess and wasteful expenditure from State CAMPA fund, it stated.
The report further observed: ‘Forest land was being used by the private companies and PSUs as well as the Forest Department for non forestry purposes in violation of the Forest Conservation Act.’
The Revenue land received from the user agencies was not notified as Reserved Forest/Protected Forest. Moreover, the cost of Compensatory Afforestation was recovered from user agencies at lower rates due to erroneous calculation of rates, the report stated.
It stated that the ‘Net Present Value’ (NPV) was not collected as per the guidelines issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court and Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).
The State CAMPA did not utilise the funds sanctioned for various facilities’. The expenditure was incurred on purchase and maintenance of vehcles, creation of infrastructure and eco-tourism activities in contravention of the guidelines and instructions issued by Ministry of Environment and Forests, the report stated.
It observed: ‘The records of works executed in the forest area were not maintained in accordance with the provisions of the ‘Working Plan’ manual. Due to delay in execution of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the monitoring and evaluation of the works could not be ensured’.