Centre flags poor compliance with CAMPA rules; governing body led by CM hasn’t met since 2018-19 despite legal mandate
PANAJI
The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) has criticised the Goa government for not following the rules under the Compensatory Afforestation (CAF) Act. CAMPA expressed concern that various State-level committees set up under the Act have failed to hold regular meetings as required.
In the last six years, the State CAMPA Executive Committee has met only seven times, and the Steering Committee only six times. According to the CAF Act, both committees must meet every three months in a financial year.
More seriously, the State CAMPA Governing Body, led by the Chief Minister, has not held a single meeting since 2018-19, even though it is supposed to meet twice a year.
At a recent meeting of the National Executive Council, CAMPA’s CEO pointed out that States like Goa are holding only one meeting a year of the Executive and Steering Committees—mainly to approve the Annual Plan of Operations (APO)—and the Governing Body is not meeting at all.
Other States and Union Territories like Assam, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand have also held just one Governing Body meeting over time.
The Executive Council has now directed all States and UTs to follow the CAF Act, 2016, and conduct regular meetings of the Governing Body, Executive Committee, and Steering Committee.
According to reports shared with the National Authority, the Executive Committee, chaired by the Chief Secretary, has met seven times in six years—once each year except in 2024-25, when two meetings were held. The Steering Committee, led by the Chief Principal Conservator of Forests, has met six times. But this still falls short of the required four meetings per year.
Meanwhile, CAMPA’s Executive Council has approved a revised annual plan for Goa. It has sanctioned Rs 14.96 crore, slightly higher than last year’s Rs 13.74 crore, but much lower than the State’s proposed budget of Rs 33.98 crore. Goa currently has about Rs 406 crore in its CAMPA fund.
For 2025-26, the Council has approved Rs 2.26 crore for compensatory afforestation (CA) across 130 hectares, and Rs 5.29 crore for maintaining older plantations spread across 1,432 hectares. It has also cleared Rs 1.39 crore for raising nearly 6.95 lakh seedlings for future CA efforts.
Additionally, the State has received Rs 1.04 crore for Assisted Natural Regeneration Plantation (ANRP) across 145 hectares, and Rs 1.18 crore for maintaining one to three-year-old ANRP areas.
The Council has also approved plans related to plantation and forest protection, wildlife habitat improvement, and soil and water conservation.
According to the APO, the Forest Department will carry out compensatory afforestation on 486.98 hectares over the next three years. Goa has already achieved over 97 per cent of its CA targets on non-forest and degraded forest land diverted for development projects.
