CAG report: Green India Mission falls short by 98% in forest cover targets, citing mismanagement

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has flagged the failure by the country’s ongoing mission to achieve forest cover targets, highlighting that the observed increase in forest cover fell short by nearly 98% during 10 years of implementation (2015-16 to 2024-25) of the Green India Mission (GIM).

The country’s top-auditor highlighted various shortcomings in its performance audit report on the Programme, highlighting financial mismanagement, improper planning, lack of coordination, absence of convergence of various schemes to increase green cover, deficient monitoring and wrong choice of landscape for planting trees behind non-achievement of the GIM’s goals.

The GIM’s broad objectives were to increase forest cover, improve the quality of forest/non-forest lands, improve ecosystem services, which include biodiversity, hydrological services and carbon sequestration in forest land/non-forest land as well as increasing forest-based income for families living in and around forests.


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"As against the target of 1.4 million hectares (mha), improvement of forest cover quality was observed in only 0.11 mha (nearly 92% shortfall). Similarly, an increase in forest cover was observed in only 0.03 mha as against the target of 1.4 mha (nearly 98% shortfall)." said the CAG, underlining its key audit findings, in its report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday.

The auditing agency highlighted that despite vulnerability being a principal factor, areas with low to moderate priority were selected over those more vulnerable to climate change for afforestation under the Mission.

The audit report examined the planning, implementation and monitoring of the GIM in 16 states and UTs whose physical and financial targets were approved by the environment ministry during the period 2015-16 to 2024-25.

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The CAG pointed out deficient monitoring and noted that 14 states even failed to provide required public web links for transparency. The auditing agency flagged that the evaluations in the audit revealed inflated data and exaggerated achievements and GIS analysis showed that 70% of sampled sites had no noticeable changes attributable to GIM.