Now Reading: CAG flags Green India Mission shortfall, poor planning
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CAG flags Green India Mission shortfall, poor planning
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found major shortfalls in the Green India Mission due to poor financial planning and weak coordination with existing schemes. The audit report, tabled…
The Story in Brief
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found major shortfalls in the Green India Mission due to poor financial planning and weak coordination with existing schemes. The audit report, tabled in Parliament on August 12, said convergence, central to the mission's strategy, was absent at all institutional levels.
Against a target of improving forest cover quality across 1.4 million hectares, only 0.11384 million hectares saw improvement, a 91.87% shortfall. Forest cover increased across just 0.03409 million hectares against the same target, a 97.57% shortfall. Only Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assessed carbon sequestration. Of 68 sampled Annual Plans of Operation, only six reached the ministry before the financial year began, and none was approved on time. The report also noted that only Rs 1,149.14 crore of the approved Rs 2,000 crore plus Rs 400 crore was received as budgetary support over 10 years.
The Indian Opinion
The CAG's findings puncture the usual official narrative of green triumphs. For a mission central to the National Action Plan on Climate Change, missing 90% of targets is not a resource problem, it is a planning failure. States and ministries ran overlapping schemes in silos, and the money simply did not flow. This is not a partisan issue; it is an administrative one. Watch whether the environment ministry accepts the CAG's findings and names the officials responsible, or reaches for a new scheme to mask the old shortfall.
Source: hindustantimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
