Edited by Deepali Verma
The personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), including Assam Rifles and the NSG, has been tasked by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to geotag all the saplings they planted owing to a tree planting drive that started in 2020 in their campuses and neighbourhoods across the country. They are supposed to upload details regarding the saplings on the Government Land Information System (GLIS) portal.
An MHA official reported that from 2020 to 2022, close to 3.55 crore saplings were planted by the personnel of CRPF, Border Security Force (BSF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Assam Rifles (AR), and National Security Guard (NSG) – which together constituents the entire wing of the Central Armed Police Forces.
The BSF became the nodal agency for the initiative of tree planting and had directed all the CAPFs that the saplings must be numbered, and that this should be “based on force name, year of plantation/IG headquarter/DIG HQ/number”. This instruction was given on December 26.
“A request was made by the BSF to upload the details of the plantation done on the government land Information system (GLIS) portal within two to three days. Therefore, it is suggested that the number of saplings planted by CRPF during Plantation Drive 2020 to 2023 may please be done immediately as per the mechanism put in place by the MHA. The details of plantation further done may additionally be uploaded on GLIS portal immediately and a fortnightly ATR on all the directions may please be forwarded on 2 and 17 of every month,” the communication said.
As per the ministry’s annual report for 2022-23, CAPFs have undertaken plantation drives in their respective campuses and neighbourhoods. “The idea came from the Union Home Minister and CAPFs started following an organised mass scale plantation drive in their campuses and places of deployment across 28 States and 6 Union Territories. This achievement by CAPFs, Assam Rifles and NSG indicates both their concern for the environment and their commitment to the social cause,” the report said.
As per the report, the CAPFs plans to carry out the planting of about one crore saplings per year over the next four years.
The report’s yearly breakdown of the number of saplings revealed that the CAPFs planted 1.47 crore saplings in 2020, 1.07 crore in 2021 and 1.01 crore in 2022. The figure for the last year are yet not available.
