Orissa submits Annual Plan for availing CAMPA funds

The Orissa government has submitted the Annual Plan of Operations for 2010-11 of the State Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) to the Adhoc-CAMPA, Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), on November 12 this year.

This was stated by the state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in response to a query in the state assembly.

"It is not a fact that the state government has failed to submit its Annual Plan of Operations for utilization of CAMPA funds for 2010-11. The Annual Plan of Operations of the State CAMPA for 2010-11 has been submitted to Adhoc-CAMPA, Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) on November 12 this year with the request to consider the same and release funds”, he said.

"During 2009-10, the Adhoc-CAMPA had released an amount of Rs 131.06 crore to the State CAMPA, Orissa on August 21, 2009 for implementation of Annual Plan of Operations. The actual process of implementation of the said Annual Plan commenced from November 2009 and an amount of Rs 91 crore has been spent till October 2010. The balance fund is likely to be utilized shortly. As per the state CAMPA guidelines, there is no provision for submission of utilization of certificate to the Adhoc-CAMPA. However, the utilization of funds has been intimated to the MoEF”, Patnaik added.

It may be noted that on November 11, Jairam Ramesh, the Union minister for environment and forests, had written to Patnaik regarding non-submission of 'Annual Plan of Operations' for CAMPA for 2010-11. Consequently, the disbursement of Rs 140 crore to the Orissa government from the CAMPA account could not be done.The minister further stated that other states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have already got their CAMPA funds for 2010-11. He had expressed surprise over the fact that Orissa had not moved ahead with the same speed as the other states in this connection.