Saw Images Of Forest Guards Dousing Fires With Banana Leaves : Supreme Court To Uttarakhand Govt, Seeks Permanent Solution To Forest Fires

Previously, the Bench of Justices B.R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta, after recording the lackadaisical approach of the State in controlling the fires, had directed the Chief Secretary of the state to personally remain present. Apart from this the Court had also put to the State several relevant questions. One such question was that why CAMPA Funds(Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) of only 3.1099 crores was released when the Union of India had sanctioned 9.13 crores.

Following the last week's order, the State's chief secretary was present before the Court. 

After being asked by the Bench about the funds, the Solicitor General said that the same was being fully utilised. Thereafter, he referred to the status report and answered:

“For financial year 2023-2024 8.96 crore was approved by…CAMPA for various activities related to forest fire prevention and control and entire money was utilised last year itself.”

It may be noted that in the earlier order, the Court had also posed “As to why the forest personnel were deployed on election duties, in spite of their being a specific exemption issued by the Election Commission of India.”

In this regard, the Union officer submitted that “Principal secretary, forest and environment government of Uttarakhand issued an order dated Feb 3^rd to DM to exempt field staff of forest department from the election duty of lok Sabha election, 2024 and also not to engage the field vehicles for this purpose….No filed officer from wildlife sanctuary and national park and senior IFS officers were engaged in the election duty, certain failed officials of the forest department were engaged due to shortage of government staff…”

However, the Court was not satisfied with the report and said that prima facie the information provided to the Solicitor seems to be incorrect. Justice Mehta went on to say “There are images and interviews of your forest guards. They are dousing the fires by using banana leaves. It is a fact which no one can deny…I have read one of these interviews.”

Subsequently, Mehta proposed to sit together with Amicus, Chief secretary and the ASG Aishwary Bhati and work out the modalities. In view of this, the Court passed the following order:

“In pursuance of our order…the chief secretary of State of UK….are present in the Court. Ld. Solicitor General has placed on record a copy of a report prepared by the chief secretary on behalf of the State of Uttarakhand in compliance of the order dated May 15, 2024…

As has been stated earlier, the present litigation is not a adversarial litigation. The only concern is that the precious forests should be saved from the hazards of the forest fires. Ld. SG has assured that the State has taken the issue seriously and chief secretary along with the other senior officers will personally be looking into the issue and trying to find out a permanent solution for avoiding the forest fires and bringing them under control at the earliest.

SG also stated that he himself along with the chief secretary…and the learned amicus would sit together in working out the modalities…Posted in September.”

Case Title: THE STATE OF UTTARAKHAND & ANR v. IN THE MATTER OF THE PROTECTION OF FOREST, ENVIRONMENT, ECOLOGY, WILDLIFE ETC. FROM THE FOREST FIRE ETC., CIVIL APPEAL NO(S). 1249/2019

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