The Supreme Court has fixed May 15 for hearing Uttarakhand’s forest fire case. While hearing the case, the court directed the Uttarakhand government and petitioners to give their reports to the Central Empowered Committee (CEC). To get their opinion and assessment on this matter.
While giving an update to the Supreme Court regarding steps taken by the government to contain forest fire, the state government has revealed that only 0.1% of the forest cover has been affected.
“People say 40 per cent of Uttarakhand is on fire,” the counsel said, adding that only 0.1 per cent of the wildlife cover in the hill state was on fire.” said the lawyer who placed an interim status report before the bench.
As further disclosed by the state government, Uttarakhand has witnessed around 398 incidents of forest fire since November last year. All of them are man-made disasters.
As a result, it has initiated 350 criminal cases with 62 individuals already on a suspect list.
However, during the hearing, the bench comprising of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta had ordered the government to take more proactive or appropriate measures.
And further emphasized that cloud seeding or depending upon rain solely isn’t an appropriate or viable solution to the problem. Thus, the court also told government, to take more preventive measures.