Poor financial planning and weak alignment with existing state and Central schemes led to major shortfalls in implementing the Green India Mission, a new Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report has found.
It found that the mission also lacked alignment with existing schemes like CAMPA, MGNREGS and other Central and state afforestation initiatives. The CAG also found poor coordination among government programmes. Schemes such as the Nagar Van Yojana and School Nursery Yojana operated in silos, while the Ministry did not receive consolidated Annual Plans of Operation (APOs) from states and Union territories. APOs set out the annual physical and financial targets for forestry, afforestation and climate-adaptation activities.
The audit covered GIM interventions in 16 states and Union territories for which the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had approved physical and financial targets between 2015-16 and 2024-25. The audit found that only six of 68 sampled APOs were received by the ministry before the start of the financial year, while none was approved on time. “The lack of convergence led to non-attainment in securing ₹ 10,600 crore in proposed funding support. Further, against an outlay of ₹ 2,000 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs from the 12th Plan for the initial four years of the Scheme alongwith ₹ 400 crore from 13th Finance Commission grants towards states share, only ₹ 1,149.14 crore (47.88%), was received through budgetary support during 10 years of implementation.
“The absence of convergence, central to the implementation strategy of the Green India Mission (GIM), was evident across all institutional levels,” said the CAG audit report, tabled in Parliament on August 12. “Furthermore, no state, except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015–2025,” the report said, linking this to poor financial management.
