NAGPUR: With five days left for the 13 crore ‘Greening Maharashtra’
drive to end, the campaign doesn’t seem to have gone well with all the agencies. Among the laggard agencies are two of the most polluting industries — energy department and Western Coalfields Limited (WCL). The energy department was set a
plantation target of over 1.26 lakh seedlings but planted 75,548 (59%) while WCL, set a target of 1.65 lakh saplings, planted 7,580 seedlings (5.53%) till July 26.
Most of the 13 crore plantations, which is expected to surpass the target, is due to the forest department, whose three wings — social forestry (SFD), Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) and wildlife wing together planted 7.34 crore saplings while others have planted 4.51 crore.
Till 7.30pm on Thursday, plantation of over 11.60 crore saplings had been recorded online, while, according to forest department, 86.43 lakh sapling plantation was recorded offline till Wednesday.
However, even as the forest department has exceeded the target, NGOs (31%), educational institutes (72%), PWD (58%), gram panchayats (55%), NHAI (42%), Central Railway (18%), and departments of labour (16%), industry (48%), tourism (35%), rural (45%), agriculture (63%), public health (57%), and urban development (53%) are far behind achieving their targets.
APCCF (policy & information technology) Praveen Srivastava said, “We can’t comment on the performance of other departments, but certainly their participation has increased as compared to last two drives to plant two crore and four crore saplings.”
On the meagre plantations, WCL general manager (environment) Kaushik Chakraborty said, “We will achieve our target of 1.65 lakh trees. Not a single tree will be planted less. It is not about planting all the saplings in a month. We have distributed the target month-wise.”
Chakraborty added, in addition to the 1.65 lakh saplings, WCL has distributed 35,000 seedlings in Chandrapur villages. “We expect to achieve the set target in August,” he said.
In the meanwhile, Nanded has taken the lead in Maharashtra by achieving 99% target. The district planted 78.53 saplings of the 78.75 lakh target followed by Kolhapur (98%), Nandurbar (97%), Beed (96%), Sangli (95%), Gadchiroli (94%), Sindhudurg (93%) and Thane (91%). Wardha in Nagpur division has fared the worst by achieving a target of just 54%.
In the meanwhile, the PCCF (HOFF) office has expressed dissatisfaction over lackadaisical attitude of chief conservator of forests (CCFs) in the state in submitting drone pictures of plantations.
The department spent lakhs in deploying drones to gather evidence of plantations, but till now CCFs have failed to submit these pictures. Even the videos sent by the officials are not geo-referenced.
