Government disowns its controversial draft National Forest Policy

The environment ministry distanced itself from the recently released draft National Forest Policy and claimed it was neither meant to be put in public domain. It disowned the draft stating that it was merely a 'study report' from a government institute. A press release from the environment ministry on June 25 said, “The Ministry has not issued any draft Notification on National Forest Policy. What has been

uploaded on the website was a study done by Indian Institute of Forest Management Bhopal. The study has not been evaluated by the Ministry. The Ministry has not taken any decision on Draft Forest Policy. The study report prepared by IIFM Bhopal was inadvertently uploaded as Draft Forest Policy on the Website.”

But, even hours after the press release from the ministry the draft continued to be available on the ministry’s website though buried on a webpage deep inside to which no link was publicly available. The office memorandum of the ministry inviting people’s comment on the draft policy is merely 15 days, by June30, 2016 also continued to be available on the ministry’s website, again uploaded against a webpage the link to which had not been published publicly.

Business Standard had reported on the government’s draft National Forest Policy on June 20 noting how it contravened the Forest Rights Act and at the same time promoted the idea of permitting industry to use government forest lands. While asking for changes in laws that did not adhere to the policy, it proposed a new administrative and legal regime that would hand back management control over tribal forest lands to the forest bureaucracy, which the FRA disallows.

On June 25, the senior most forest official of the country, the Director General of Forests in the press release said, “As Director General Forest, I would like to clarify that this document is not the Draft Forest Policy.”

In contrast to the environment ministry’s latest claims, the office memorandum of the ministry dated June 16 read, “The ministry is in the process of revising the present National Forest Policy, 1988. A draft National Forest Policy in this regard has been prepared and is enclosed. All stakeholders are requested to send their comments, if any, by email ...by June 20, 2016.” Signed by the DIG Forests in charge of forest policy, the notification was also marked to NIC Cell of the ministry to be uploaded on the environment ministry site along with the draft, where it remained even at the time of filing this story. The subject line of the office memorandum also read, “Draft National Forest Policy, 2016  - inviting comments regarding”.

The ministry on Saturday claimed, “What has been uploaded on the website was a study done by Indian Institute of Forest Management Bhopal. The study has not been evaluated by the Ministry. The Ministry has not taken any decision on Draft Forest Policy. The study report prepared by IIFM Bhopal was inadvertently uploaded as Draft Forest Policy on the Website.”

The environment ministry also said, “The Ministry has an elaborate procedure for preparing draft policy document, which takes into account multiple inputs from all stakeholders, state governments, think tanks and public consultation. No process has been carried out on the document prepared by IIFM Bhopal, which is only one of the inputs. A draft Forest Policy will be put in Public Domain once due process is carried out and views of all stakeholders taken into account.”

The draft policy which the ministry has now disclaimed ownership over mentions that it was draft commissioned by the environment ministry, funded by the United Nations Development and  prepared  by the Indian Institute of Forest Management, a government institution. The preface to the document said it had been prepared “based on village level focus group discussions, regional and national level consultations, inputs from various stakeholders and analysis of primary and secondary data sets carried out during the years 2015 and 2016.” It is not written as a report recommending to the government what should or should not be included in a policy but as a policy document of the government with each page also marked as “National Forest Policy, 2016 (draft).”