Inadequate monitoring of adventure activities by the Environment and Forest Department, lack of clear knowledge of the forests and poor training among trekkers have been identified as factors that caused the death of over 23 trekkers in a forest fire at Kurangani hills in Theni district in March.
Sources said these aspects had been highlighted in a report submitted by senior IAS officer Atulya Misra to Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami at the Secretariat on Friday. Mr. Misra is the Enquiry Officer tasked with conducting a probe into the incident.
According to a source who perused the over 100-page report, the probe revealed faults on the part of the range and district-level officials of the Forest Department in monitoring activities in the wild, and there were loopholes in the surveillance of forest areas.
In this case, it was found that a tout, and not the trek organiser, led the trekkers into the forest area, and they were both ill-equipped and untrained to handle any untoward incident.
The enquiry officer is believed to have highlighted that there is no mechanism in place to monitor the numerous organisations that claim to have expertise in adventure sports, trekking and camping in forests.
The source said that one of the recommendations made in the report was to provide training to Forest Department officials in surveillance and forest-related activities.
Following the forest fire on March 11 and the resulting fatalities, the CM appointed Mr. Misra as the enquiry officer, tasked with conducting a probe into the incident and submitting a report in two months. The circumstances that led to the tragedy were to be probed to enable the government to take further action, the CM had said.
According to the terms of reference for the inquiry, Mr. Misra was to probe and further review the procedures adopted by the Forest Department.