Bhopal: Let’s create record, forget about survival of saplings

Bhopal: Let’s create record, forget about survival of saplings

Staff ReporterUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 06:25 AM IST
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Bhopal: The government seems to be more concerned about creating a world record rather than how many of the crores of saplings to be supposedly planted on July 2 on both banks of Narmada River would survive. On Wednesday, CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is scheduled to address a meeting of collectors, SPs and district panchayat CEOs of 22 districts, which fall in the riparian zone of the Narmada, besides DFOs posted in these areas. The officers have been asked to come down to the capital to attend the meeting, which will have the plantation drive as its sole agenda.

The collectors have been assigned targets for registrations. The CM’s office is keeping a close eye on how many persons have registered for planting saplings. To ensure that a record is created, it has been made compulsory for government officers and employees to plant saplings. For acceptance of a claim as a world record, testimonies are required and that is why all the government officers and employees have been ordered to suspend their routine work on July 2 and only be witness to plantations. As the government cannot find six crore saplings for love or for money in the state, the horticulture and forest departments have been asked to procure saplings from wherever they can all over the country.

Around 1.5 crore saplings were planted during ‘Hariyali Mahotsava’ in 2015 and that record stands in the name of the state in Guinness Book of World Records. The government now wants to break that record and it has decided to devote all its energies for it. At the meeting, the officers are supposed to tell the CM about the preparations they have made for the drive. BJP workers have also been roped in and collectors have been asked to persuade various social and cultural organisations and clubs to chip in. The million dollar question, however, is how many saplings will survive the vagaries of weather and marauding cattle?

Azad Singh Dabas, an ex-IFS officer, who retired as APCCF says that the plantation drive is nothing but a big show. He said while plantation was important, what was even more important was ensuring the survival of the planted saplings. He said the state forest department simply did not have plants in these numbers and it was going to buy plants from private nurseries at exorbitant rates. He said the government should first tell the people how many saplings planted in earlier drives had survived.

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