the goan I network
PANAJI
In a major relief to the cash-starved State government, the Centre on Friday transferred a significant Rs 238 crore into the State treasury for compensatory afforestation under its Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) funds. The fund was released by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on Thursday. Twenty six other States were also similarly allocated funds totalling over Rs 47,436 crore to fund compensatory afforestation and other green activities.
Some of the other activities that this fund will be put to use include prevention of forest fires, biodiversity management and soil conservation.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant thanked the MoEFCC for allocating the funds to Goa.
The Union Environment minister Prakash Javadekar, while disbursing the funds urged all States, who have received CAMPA funds, to utilize it as per the provisions of the Compensatory Afforestation Funds Rules & not to reduce their respective State’s regular budgetary allocations for Forest.
“This fund is not to be used for salaries, travelling and other allowances to regulate contractual and casual employees of the state forest departments. I appeal to the State chief ministers that this fund be used to rapidly increase green cover,”
Javadekar said.
Out of a total allocation of Rs 47,436 crore to the States, Odisha received Rs 5,933.98
crore while Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh got Rs 5,791.70 crore and Rs 5,196.69 crore respectively.
The 26 states other than Goa which have received the CAMPA funds are Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Assam, Bihar, Sikkim, Manipur, West Bengal, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
An ad-hoc CAMPA authority was established in 2006 on the directions of the Supreme Court for management of funds and in 2009 the Apex court permitted the release of Rs 1,000 crore every year to States or Union Territories for compensatory afforestation and other activities.
In 2014, the Apex court had permitted release of 10 per cent of total deposit of States in the fund from interest accrued due to which a large amount of funds remained unutilised and grew to around Rs 40,000 crore in 2016.
In 2018, Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Rules were put in place and in January 2019, with the approval of the Supreme Court, an amount of Rs 54,685 crore from ad-hoc CAMPA has been brought under the control of the Centre.
