Afforestation of forest areas in Jaintia Hills
SHILLONG: The state government is waiting for social impact assessment of inhabitants whose land will be acquired before carrying out compensatory afforestation for forest areas used by the erring cement companies in Jaintia Hills.
The Forest Minister Prestone Tynong said that the state government had entrusted State Institute for Rural Development (Nongsder) and Meghalaya Institute of Governance to carry out social impact assessment.
He said that earlier NEHU was approached for the task, but the University declined and later, the Lok Sabha polls was announced in 2014 which resulted in further delay on carrying out impact assessment .
The Forest Minister said that the delay in the implementation of Land Acquisition Act by the Centre as the Act went through many modifications had also affected the state government in finalizing the compensatory afforestation.
Earlier, the report of CAG for the year ended March 2015 had criticized the lackadaisical approach of the Forest Department for allowing undue commercial benefit of Rs 42.24 crore to the six cement plants towards Net Present Value (NPV) not realized and also for the unauthorized operation of the cement plants without seeking necessary clearances in violations of the regulatory Acts.
“Moreover, the fact that the cement plants still continue to run their operations with impunity and in total disregard to the provisions of the Forest Conservation indicates connivance between the Forest Department and the cement plants and is a matter which needs serious investigation by the State Government as well as the Ministry of Environment and Forest”, the CAG said
On this being pointed out in November 2014, the PCCF, Meghalaya had stated in December 2014 that the concerned DFO had been asked to report on the status of the applications in respect of the six cement companies. A report on the present status of the applications along with action taken to recover the NPV has not been received till November 2015 as per the CAG report.
As per Section 1.1 of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (Rules & Guidelines) all proposals for diversion of forest land for non-forest purpose require prior approval of the Government of India. The Ministry of Environment & Forests had directed in June 2003 that all State Governments should recover Net Present Value (NPV) of forest lands diverted for non-forest purposes from the user agencies for which approval was granted on or after 30 October 2002. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management & Plantation Authority (CAMPA) also directed in September 2007 all state governments to stop all activities on forest land in respect of those projects for which NPV had not been realised. NPV is to be realised on the basis of classification of forests into six ecological classes based on categories of very dense forest, dense forest and open forest. As per the CAG report, the six cement plants in the state, Amrit Cement Industries Limited, Cement Manufacturing Company Limited, Green Valley Industries Limited, Goldstone Cement Limited, Hill Cements Company Limited and Meghalaya Cement Limited which declared land holdings of 2122.83 hectares (ha) obtained state government approval for operation of cement plants on various dates between March 2002 and October 2008, but failed to obtain prior approval of the Centre for diversion of forest land, although these projects were situated in forest land. Based on complaints received from various quarters, a High Level Committee (HLC) was constituted by the State Government during March/April 2011 to appraise the status of land holdings under the cement plants in the Jaintia Hills district of the state and suggest measures for initiating action against the defaulting cement plants for violations of the Forest Conservation Act.
Based on various assessments between August 2011 and November 2011 the HLC opined that the cement plants had indeed been operating in forest lands. The HLC also inter alia recommended to the state government that the cement plants should submit proposals for seeking approvals under the Forest Conservation Act.
Accordingly, a joint inspection was undertaken by the Regional Office, MoEF and the state forest department in three phases between March 2012 and June 2012. The team inspected 1502.55 ha of land held by these cement companies and assessed17 642.87 ha of land as forest land and 802.12 ha as non-forest land while the status of 57.56 ha of forest land could not be assessed. “However, despite the reports of the HLC and the joint inspection team which corroborated the fact that 642.87 ha of land as forest land had actually been diverted by the cement plants, no action was taken by the Forest Department and the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) against the cement plants either by way of stopping their activities on forest lands or by directing the cement plants to submit proposals for seeking clearances from the Centre”, the CAG added.