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| Forest deptt's silence smacks of its nexus with construction company | | Hundreds of deodar, kail trees die as MGCPL ruthlessly dumps road debris in woods along Bhaderwah-Chamba stretch | |  Bharat Bhushan
JAMMU, Sept 10: Due to the ruthless dumping of the road debris by MG Contractors Pvt Ltd (MGCPL) in the thickly forested valleys along 42.5 km Bhaderwah-Chamba stretch, several hundred deodar and kail trees have "died" a premature death. Forest department's silence in the matter hints at its possible nexus at some level with the construction company.
The Delhi-based MGCPL, which also operates from Panchkula in Haryana, got the Rs 77 cr contract for the widening and construction of Bhaderwah-Chamba road in 2010. The work was started by it in 2010 itself.
Officially nearly 9,000 deodar and kail trees were marked to be felled during the construction and widening of the road but surprisingly, there was as yet no exact count of the trees which died after hundreds of tons of debris was thrown around them.
When MGCPL took up the work on the road in 2010, Bashir Ahmad Shah was Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Bhaderwah Forest Division. He now stands transferred to other division in Doda district.
An official communication, signed by Shah during his tenure, has no mention of the trees damaged by the debris but it has put the number of trees uprooted during road widening at nearly 200, but sources in the Bhaderwah wing of Forest Department held the contents of the letter as misleading. "In reality, the debris has caused irreversible damage to several thousand trees in less than an year," the sources added.
When contacted over phone, Shah said 8,670 deodar and kail trees were legally felled by the state forest corporation (SFC) before work was taken up on the road. But over 10,000 more got damaged during road widening by MGCPL, he informed.
He claimed that he had prepared a report in this regard and the department might have extracted these 10,000 trees. He, however, was not sure if the department had taken the custody of these trees and transported them to its godown.
But when he was told that ET has in its possession a copy of his letter, according to which only 200 deodar and kail trees were damaged during road widening, he hesitatingly said, "I now remember I had written a letter in this regard to the PWD's executive engineer for Bhaderwah-Chamba division."
The letter, however, does not bear official number and date. When he was apprised of it, he said, "I had properly drafted the letter/bill to report the loss caused to the forest wealth to the government. If it is true that it does not carry the official number and date, I do not know if the lower staff had sent it to the authorities concerned, or not."
According to the letter, its copies stand submitted to Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF), Conservator of Forests, Chenab circle, Doda, Chief Engineer of PWD, Superintending Engineer of PWD, R&B circle, Doda, PWD's Executive Engineer for Bhaderwah-Chamba division, forest range officer, Neeru, HC/FA and FC Act section.
Repeated attempts to contact PCCF and CCF for their comments failed as they did not pick up their phones.
In the letter, the DFO has put the estimated loss at Rs 89,88,700. Sources, however, termed this estimate as "misleading", and said the losses actually amounted to several crores as lots of damaged trees had allegedly not been counted by the Forest Department's field staff.
The letter specifically says that the construction agency has done loss to the forest wealth in violation of the government order No 159-FST of 2009 dated April 3, 2009, (condition No 8) during the widening of Bhaderwah-Chamba road. Most of the trees were damaged in six compartments - 29/N, 31/N, 32/N, 33/N, 34/N and 35/N, and these were of different sizes and costs. The maximum cost of a fully-grown tree was put at Rs 26,460.
In the letter, Shah has asked PWD to compensate the loss and also submitted a bill in this regard to the PWD's Executive Engineer for Bhaderwah-Chamba division, asking him to deposit the amount in his office against the damages reported to him vide his office letter No 1907-09 of August 23, 2011.
In reply to a query, he said he did not have any report of the damage done to trees due to the dumping of debris in forests. Asked if he had done the normal exercise in this regard, he replied in the negative.
Contrary to his claim, the photographs taken by ET at different places along the Bhaderwah-Chamba road speak of the colossal damage done to the trees by the debris thrown by MGCPL in the forests.
MGCPL manager Raghubir claimed that the company had dumped debris at the places which were away from forests. Only a few trees suffered damages but that was because of the blasting of rocks and not due to the dumping of mulba, he added.
He said the road construction was likely to be completed by next year. Asked if forest officials ever visited the site, he said they almost came their daily and never complained of any loss to the trees.
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