NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed the Uttarakhand and central governments over their "lackadaisical" approach in handling forest fires and directed the state Chief Secretary to be present personally before it on May 17.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai, S V N Bhatti and Sandeep Mehta questioned both the governments over availability of funds for the forest department, lack of equipment, and the diversion of forest guards to election duties, among all other issues.
Though multiple action plans have been prepared, no step has been taken for their implementation, and termed state government's defence as mere "excuses", the bench said.
The court criticised the Uttarakhand government for its sluggish approach in containing several wildfires and also dealing with damage to over 1,100 hectares caused by several hundred fires reported since November.
The state government counsel pointed out the High Court had passed several directions regarding forest fires and many of them have been implemented but it had to file an appeal as some conditions were not possible to be implemented.
"The High Court had said in the event of fire going on for 24 hours, the DFO will be automatically suspended. If it goes on for 48 hours, the principal conservator of the forest will be suspended," the counsel said.
"It was only to wake them out of slumber. High court must have realised that," the bench remarked.
The court also noted the single biggest hurdle was about the vacancies.
The state government explained that the funding is a problem and the state has a big forest cover but funding resources are limited. It also claimed that the Centre has not provided sufficient funds.
A counsel, representing a party in the matter, criticised the state authorities for downplaying the forest fires issue and claimed the few firefighters available often had to douse blazes without proper equipment.
The bench was informed that the state was granted Rs three crore, against a demand of Rs 10 crore, to deal with the fires.
Upon this, the bench pulled up the Centre for not providing sufficient funds to the state government. The bench also criticised the deployment of forest officials for election-related responsibilities and said it is a "sorry state of affairs".
"Why have adequate funds not been given? Why have you put forest employees on poll duty amid fires," the bench asked.
