Cabinet approves unlocking of Rs 38,000 crore compensatory afforestation fund

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet on Wednesday approved unlocking of the Rs 38,000 crore compensatory afforestation fund that has been lying unused for years. This paves the way for introducing the Compensatory Afforestation Bill, 2015 in Parliament in the ongoing session.

The move will open up disbursal of substantive funds to state governments for increasing afforestation. The proposed law aims at unlocking the mega corpus by moving it to the non-lapsable interest bearing funds under the Public Accounts of India, thereby freeing it from court procedures.
At present an ad hoc Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management & Afforestation Authority ( CAMPA) manages the fund, a corpus collected from user agencies that is meant to be used for compensatory afforestation, penal compensatory afforestation and net present value of forest land diverted.

As per Supreme Court guidelines of 2009, funds up to Rs 1,000 crore can be given to state level CAMPA. However, in order to withdraw a greater amount, the ministry of environment and forests is constrained to seek permission from the apex court. While attempts were made by the previous UPA government as well to unlock this corpus by moving it to the Public Accounts of India, the plan never took off.

As per a statement issued by the environment ministry, the Bill seeks "to provide an appropriate institutional mechanism, both at the Centre and in each state and Union Territory, to ensure expeditious utilisation in efficient and transparent manner of amounts realised in lieu of forest land diverted for non-forest purpose."