Siliconindia.com: Bangalore: Saturday,
June 15, 2013.
India records
for a great amount of forest cover being lost. The extent of forest land being
diverted across the nation on an average is 135 hectares (around 333 acres) per
day, reported Rohith B R for TNN. These diversions are done stating various
reasons like coal mines, industrial or river valley projects, thermal power
plants, etc, revealed recent data acquired through RTI from the ministry of
environment and forests by environmentalists.
The blatant
truth is that large tracts of forest land are being handed over to public and
private agencies who claim to use the forest land for development projects.
The figure is
said to be much higher as the analysis relates only to projects which have
sought more than 40 hectares of area, as per Members of the Environment Impact
Assessment Resources and Response Centre (eRc), who were instrumental in
compiling the data.
Karnataka is
one of the states that has been diverting forest land, informed Ritwik Dutta,
an advocate with Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE). He said
that "Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh and
Jharkhand are some of the other states which are into largescale diversions. We
are compiling state-specific data on the extent of land being diverted,"
as reported by TNN.
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