Nagpur: In a bid to promote ease of doing business, the MoEFCC has decided to take up comprehensive amendments to the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927, by calling expression of interest (EOI) for shortlisting consultancy organizations.
The appointed consultancy firm will prepare a draft and submit it to the government. The EoI will open on April 27. The central government is undertaking a comprehensive review of legislations implemented by different ministries in order to synchronize them with contemporary needs.
The MoEFCC has said the exercise is focusing on decriminalizing relatively minor violations of law, expeditious resolution through compounding relatively small offences, reducing the compliance burden on citizens, rationalization of penalties, preventing harassment of citizens, de-clogging the criminal justice system, expanding and improving use of resources, and promoting people participation and ease of doing business.
Greens say the BJP government at the Centre has taken up various exercises to bring in legislative reforms on forest governance by diluting laws. The Indian Forest Act (IFA) is one of the major Acts which is administered in the forestry sector. The last such exercise on IFA started in 2017 and the first draft was placed in the public domain.
“There was a lot of criticism and hence the plan was dropped. Similar was the case with amendments in the EIA notification last year but as lakhs of comments were received against the MoEFCC move, it has been stalled,” said environmentalist Debi Goenka.
However, MoEFCC officials say based on comments received on an earlier draft, it has been considered that a more comprehensive and pragmatic amendment of the Indian Forest Act may be examined that may encompass, in addition to issues that have been described earlier, elements such as the provision of graded penalty, removing difficulties in trade and transit of forest products across states.
“The idea is to encourage forest sector economic growth in the country, encouraging especially private sector, civil society, individuals to take up afforestation, tree plantation or develop and manage private forest on non-forest lands on their own, and incorporating pragmatic legal provisions already made in state forest laws and amendments in the IFA so that all states benefit similarly. The above central level legislative reform process will require wide consultation with the states and other stakeholders. The states should also have been asked to take into account NGT, high courts, and Supreme Court rulings of recent years,” Goenka said.
“When the forests in the country are on fire, the move doesn’t come at the right time. From the EoI conditions, it seems the firm to be offered the job is pre-decided. The conditions state that the party should have branches in Delhi and offices in major states, it should have an annual turnover of Rs1 crore in each of the last three preceding financial years, permanent employees etc,” Goenka said.
“Another condition is that the applying firm shall have handled at least one assignment of the value of minimum Rs50 lakh. With these conditions even we can’t qualify in the criteria despite having experience,” says Goenka.
Sudhir Paliwal, convener of Vidarbha Environment Action Group (VEAG), said, “The MoEFCC has already started diluting environment laws to favour road development and industries. Even Forest Conservation Act (FCA) is under restructuring. The Centre is already formulated a PPP model in the forestry sector. At present, any eco-tourism activity needs FCA clearance but it is not taken. The basic aim is to dilute the laws than making them stringent.”