GURGAON | Jan 16, 2015: The state's forest department has blamed the revenue department for failing to put an end to illegal mining in the highly eco-sensitive Aravali hills in Haryana.
Haryana's chief principal conservator of forests, C R Jotliwal, said during a visit to Gurgaon on Thursday illegal mining does not take place in the Aravali area that comes within the forest department's jurisdiction. "All the areas that fall under sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act do not face the brunt of mining," he said.
But conservator of forests M D Sinha, who accompanied Jotliwal, said mining takes place in the area under the revenue department.
"We have hardly 20% of the Aravali area under our jurisdiction, and the rest falls under the revenue department's jurisdiction. The mining takes place in the area that belongs to the revenue department," he said.
The top forest officials were in Sohna on Thursday, to attend a convocation function of 461 trainees at the Natural Resource Management Centre.
The chief principal conservator of forests admitted that shortage of manpower has been taking a toll on the performance of the state's forest department. "Currently, only one guard is posted in the forest spread in an area that covers as much as seven to eight villages. This should change," he said.
However, following the latest round of recruitment, department's strength of guards now touches 1,350, which is just 300 short of the sanctioned strength. The new recruits include 22 women and 164 ex-servicemen.
On the recruitment, Sinha said, "Five months ago, before hiring these officials, we were apprehensive of training such a large batch of 461. But we managed to ride through it successfully. We have never hired and trained such a large number of officials at one go."
(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)