New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday stressed that precious forests should be saved from all hazards and a permanent solution should be found to avoid forest fires after assessing images and interviews of forest guards in Uttarakhand dousing the forest fire by using banana leaves.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Uttarakhand government, apprised a bench led by Justice BR Gavai about utilisation of funds for preventing and controlling forest fires, filling up of vacancies in forest department, and the availability of equipment for fire-fighting.
“The only concern is that precious forests could be saved from the hazards of fires. Mehta has assured that the state will take up the issue seriously and the chief secretary and other senior officers will personally look into the issue to find out a permanent solution of avoiding forest fires. We appreciate the stand taken by the state”, said Justice Gavai, pronouncing the order. The apex court was hearing an application filed by senior advocate Rajiv Dutta, who raised the issue of raging forest fires in Uttarakhand.
The bench comprising justice Sandeep Mehta said all stakeholders should come onboard, sit together and ensure that there is compliance. The bench said that the litigation concerning recent blazes in Uttarakhand was not "adversarial" and stressed on an action plan to control forest fires.
During the hearing, the bench observed, "while statistics are filed, there are images and interviews of your forest guards. They are dousing the fire by using banana leaves. It is a fact which no one can deny." The bench said it is posing queries from “what we have read in the reports with images”.
Mehta submitted that he is not undermining whatever is printed in the media, but sometimes it may be a bit hazardous to completely go by what is printed. Some of the photographs shown in the reports were of forest fires in California, he claimed.
Mehta said 40,184 different equipment have been provided to the field crew teams of 1,429 crew stations in the state. The bench said fire-fighting equipment should not be stocked rather they should be distributed in advance. On May 15, the apex court had asked the chief secretary to explain why from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) fund, only Rs. 3.4 crore was released for the financial year 2023-24, when the Centre had sanctioned Rs 9.12 crore.
Speaking on the issue of vacancies in forest department, he added that as on July 1 last year, the total number of vacant position of field staff was 1,709 and during the last one year, 1,252 front line field staff have been appointed.
At the end of the hearing, Mehta said that he, along with additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati, and advocate K Parameshwar, amicus curiae in the matter, will sit together and work out strategy on these issues. Uttarakhand Chief Secretary Radha Raturi, and Deputy advocate general Jatinder Kumar Sethi also appeared for the state along with Mehta. After hearing submissions, the apex court scheduled the matter for further hearing in September.
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