SK Division of Wildlife Deptt receives 13 crores during five years, spends few lakhs

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SK Division of Wildlife Deptt receives 13 crores during five years, spends few lakhs

7/8/2019 12:31:21 AM

Jehangir Rashid

Early Times Report

SRINAGAR, July 7: Office of Wildlife Warden of Department of Wildlife Protection South Kashmir Division received whopping more than 13 crores as funds for the past five years for various activities and on the ground very little activity has been done to preserve the wild life in the range.
The division received around three crores during the financial year 2018-19 and spent handful of amount on the various activities. This became clear by virtue of the reply given to a Right to Information (RTI) application moved by few persons.
Qamar Bhat, Kaisar Mir and Advocate Naseem Qadri had moved an application with the department seeking details on various counts. The RTI applicants had sought information like funds received by the division from March 2015 to 2019 and also details about the amount spent on events held by the department.
In the reply it has been said that Rs. 286.28 lakhs have been received by the division during 2018-19 for carrying out various activities. The division received 29.40 lakhs under the non-plan category while as Rs. 31.69 lakhs have been received under the Capex category.
The division received Rs. 70.94 lakhs under the Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Rs. 154.25 lakhs under the CAMPA scheme. In the reply it has been said that 0.50 lakhs (fifty thousand) were spent on the observation of Wildlife Week 2018 in collaboration with Wildlife SOS.
It has also been written that capacity building programme was held along with the training of frontline wildlife staff. It was written that the workshop in this regard was carried out in collaboration with Wildlife Trust of India under the guidance of experts. It said that financial implication of Rs 2.25 lakhs has been utilized for the said purpose.
In the RTI reply it has been written that Rs. 25,000 was spent on the travel of a foreign expert namely Jose Louics after he was hired as a guest faculty for one of the awareness programmes organized by the department during the last financial year. It has been said that no outside tour was conducted by the wildlife warden during the previous financial year adding that only official meetings were attended within the state and outside.
In the RTI reply it has been said that workshop titled "Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation' was conducted by the Wildlife Trust of India in collaboration with the Division on March 15, 2017. However, no financial implication on the part of the department was involved, it said.
The RTI reply said that Rs. 114.59 lakhs were received by the division during 2014-15, Rs. 329. 815 lakhs were received during 2015-16, Rs. 214.38 lakhs were received during 2016-17 and Rs. 382.985 lakhs were received during 2017-18. These funds were received under various heads like Non-Plan, Capex, CSS and CAMPA.

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