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Allocation of forest land to different agencies: Department suffers losses worth crores 4/9/2015 12:25:33 AM Arun Singh Early Times Report Jammu, Apr 8: The casual approach of the State Forest Department can be gauged from the fact that it diverted 85646 hectares of forest land for non forest purposes in last seven years but did not charge prescribed rates for land from the agencies, resulting in loss of Rs 7 crore. As per information available with Early Times, State Forest Department had carried out 74 sanctions during 2006 to 2013, in which 85646 hectares of forest land was diverted for non forest purposes but astonishingly the Net Present Value (NPV) was not charged at prescribed rates resulting in less realization of Rs 7 crore due to incorrect assessment of compensation rates method used by State Forest Department. It further says that 679.12 hectares of Wild life sanctuary land was diverted to four user agencies including Mughal Road Division Shopian, National Highway 1-A, BRTF and ITBP. In one such case, 11.63 hectares of land was diverted in February 2010 for Tunnel at Banihal for which Net Present Value of Rs 6.99 lakh per hectare was charged instead of charging NPV @ Rs 34.95 lakh (i.e. five times of Rs 6.99 lakh) per hectare. This had resulted in incorrect assessment and consequently resulted in less charging of Rs 3.25 crore on account of NPV. Besides, 5 per cent of the project cost was also not recovered. Information further reveals that in another case 66.81 hectare of land for Mughal Road was diverted in October 2007 for non forest use and Net Present Value of Rs 8.52 lakh per hectare was charged instead of charging NPV @ five times of Rs 9.20 lakh per hectare resulted in less charging of Rs 25.04 crore on account of NPV. Shockingly, an amount of Rs 13.72 crore was outstanding against the user agency till date but department did not take any steps to realize this huge amount. Moreover in five cases, involving 606.68 hectares of land diverted in March 2010 to July 2010 wherein no compensatory afforestation had been assessed.   Share This News with Your Friends on Social Network     Comment on this Story

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