SC pulls up Centre, Uttarakhand government over forest fires

The Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed the Central and Uttarakhand governments for not providing enough funds to battle forest fires and for diverting forest officials to election duty.

An apex court bench described it as a “sorry state of affairs” that Uttarakhand had been given only Rs 3.15 crore against a demand of Rs 10 crore to fight raging forest fires.

Massive fires

The top court stepped in as authorities in Uttarakhand struggled to contain hundreds of wildfires that had caused huge losses to more than 1,100 hectares of forests.

The judges also hauled up the Centre to insist forest officials be given election-related responsibilities.

"Why have adequate funds not been given? Why have you put forest employees on election duty amid fires?" the court asked.

SC upset

The five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand voted on April 19.

On Wednesday, a bench of justices BR Gavai, SVN Bhatti and Sandeep Mehta told government counsel: "This is a sorry state of affairs. You are just making excuses."

Rain gods

At the last hearing in the Supreme Court, the state government had said that forest officials assigned for election duty had since returned to their primary roles.

Also last week, the court said that the authorities could not depend on rain gods or cloud seeding to extinguish the fires.

The state says that only 0.1 per cent of the total forest cover -- which is an estimated 45 per cent of Uttarakhand's land area -- has been affected by the fires.

Officially, five people have been killed in the Uttarakhand forest fires. And a case has been filed against four people for starting a fire in Pithoragarh district's Gangolihat forest range.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Dhami has said his government will act against those found starting forest fires.

"This is a big challenge for us. We are working on all possibilities... including taking help from the Army… Our target is to bring the fires under control as early as possible," he said.