New Delhi: Precious forests should be saved from the hazards of forest fires, the Supreme Court said on Friday and termed the litigation concerning recent blazes in Uttarakhand as not “adversarial”.
A bench of justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta observed that everybody was interested only in “protecting the forests”.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Uttarakhand government, informed the apex court about various aspects, including utilisation of funds for preventing and controlling forest fires, filing up vacancies in forest department and providing necessary equipments for fire fighting.
When Mehta told the bench about equipment being provided for fire fighting, the bench observed, “While statistics are filed, there are images and interviews of your forest guards. They are dousing the fire by using banana leaves. It is a fact which no one can deny.”
“We are asking questions from what we have read in the reports with images,” the bench said.
Mehta said, “I am not undermining whatever is printed in the media, but sometimes it may be a little hazardous to completely go by them.”
He said some of the photographs shown in the reports were of forest fires in California. “There has to be a system whereby these equipment have to be distributed in advance. If they are just lying in stocks, what is the use then,” the bench observed.
Mehta said 40,184 different equipment have been provided to the field crew teams of 1,429 crew stations in the state. He also apprised the bench about a scheme where villages, were no forest fire are reported, gets some incentive.
During the hearing, Uttarakhand Chief Secretary Radha Raturi was also present in the court. Deputy advocate general Jatinder Kumar Sethi also appeared for the state along with the solicitor general.
The top court was hearing an application filed by senior advocate Rajiv Dutta, who is assisted by advocate Neha Singh, on raging forest fires in Uttarakhand.
The bench noted the solicitor general has placed on record a report prepared by the chief secretary on behalf of the state.
“As has been stated earlier, the present litigation is not an adversarial litigation. The only concern is that the precious forest should be saved from the hazards of forest fires,” it said. The bench said one of the issues raised earlier before it was regarding utilisation of Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority
(CAMPA) funds.