More forest fire in last four months than in 2015, says Prakash Javadekar

The government on Monday said the number of forest fire in the first four months this year has already exceeded the last year’s total of such incidents. The Centre has formulated a contingency plan for dealing with such crisis. Till April 21, a total of 20,667 incidents of forest fire have taken place. In 2015, the total number of forest fire incidents were 15,937, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha. He said that this year, 291 forest fire have broken out in Uttarakhand, 2,422 in Chhattisgarh and 2,349 in Odisha. Madhya Pradesh reported 2,238 forest fire this year against 294 such incidents last year. Maharashtra reported 1,638 forest fires this year while the number is 1,719 in Assam.