New Delhi, July 10 (Inditop.com) Seven years after it ordered creation of a fund to improve the country’s forest cover, the Supreme Court Friday ensured that Rs.10 billion is released from the corpus every year towards afforestation, wildlife conservation and creating rural jobs.
The forest bench, headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, made the annual provision for the fund, which is Rs.2 billion more than the Rs.8 billion budgetary allocation to the union Ministry of Environment and Forests for fiscal 2009-10, from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, created through the court’s order on Oct 29, 2002.
The 2002 order provided for creation of the corpus to pool in all the monies received from various governmental and non-governmental agencies exploiting forest resources and executing various projects on forestland.
The court had also ordered the government to create a statutory Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) to utilize the fund, created to finance afforestation and wildlife conservation and rehabilitate the tribal population.
In the seven years since creation of the fund, the government failed to enact a law to manage CAMPA, but the fund itself continued to grow and has reached Rs.113 billion, generating an annual interest of roughly Rs.13 billion.
The apex court forest bench, which also included Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Aftab Alam, ordered release of the Rs.10 billion annually out of the interest of the corpus.
The bench also said all the schemes for the purpose should be implemented in such a manner that sufficient rural employment is generated.
The bench said that out of Rs.10 billion, various states would be allocated funds.
The bench gave this order on a plea by the union environment ministry. which told the court that as per its earlier order last year many states have formulated their area specific programmes for afforestation and wildlife conservation.
The ministry’s plea, endorsed by a court-appointed panel, known as the Central Empowered Committee, was allowed by the court.
The court also ordered annual auditing by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India of the manner in which the fund is utilised.
