According to a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report presented in Parliament, only 0.03409 million hectares of forest cover was achieved against a target of 1.4 million hectares under the Green India Mission. The scheme aims to expand forest and tree cover, improve ecosystem services, and promote forest-based livelihoods.
The Green India Mission has fallen 97.57% short of its target , according to a report presented by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in Parliament on Thursday (August 13). While the mission aimed to increase forest cover by 1.4 million hectares (1.4 million hectares), only 0.03409 million hectares actually achieved the increase.
According to a report in the New Indian Express , the main reasons for the afforestation programme falling far short of its targets over the past decade include poor planning, weak coordination and persistent lack of funds.
For its report, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) examined the Green India Mission in 16 states and union territories between 2015-16 and 2024-25. The scheme, run by the Environment Ministry, aims to expand forest and tree cover, improve ecosystem services, and promote forest-based livelihoods.
The report said the programme suffered from a lack of coordination with other afforestation initiatives such as CAMPA and the rural employment guarantee programme MNREGA, as well as schemes including the Nagar Van Yojana and the School Nursery Scheme, which operated in isolation rather than in a coordinated manner.
The CAG also found that a bottom-up approach to planning, i.e., local planning, was not adopted in the selection of project areas. Often, areas with low or moderate climate risk were chosen, while more vulnerable areas should have been prioritized.
The auditor has also highlighted budget-related problems as reasons for the poor performance of the mission.
According to the CAG, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had approved an expenditure of ₹2,000 crore under the 12th Five-Year Plan for the first four years of the plan. In addition, ₹400 crore was to be provided from the 13th Finance Commission grants for the states' share.
But during the ten years of implementation of the scheme from 2015-16 to 2024-25, only Rs 1,149.14 crore, i.e., just 47.88 per cent of the approved amount, was received as budgetary support.
The report also found that eight states and union territories did not prepare annual accounts at all. While accounts were prepared in some areas, they often remained unaudited or contained discrepancies compared to supporting records.
The CAG report also highlighted the fact that except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, no state had made any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015-2025.
The audit also revealed that the use of unverified KML files led to inflated data and overstated achievements. GIS analysis revealed that 70 percent of the sample sites surveyed showed no significant changes due to the Green India Mission.
