Mumbai, June 14: Maharashtra is increasing it green footprint and needs greater public participation in tree plantation and green awareness, besides others undertaking horticulture plantation under the “Employment Guarantee Scheme” of the Social Forestry Department which has an area ceiling (for such plantations) of 10 hectares in Konkan Division and 4 to 6 hectares for rest of Maharashtra, said Maharashtra Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar

Addressing a “Tree Plantation” conference here recently where he felicitated college students for beautifying the Chandrapur and Ballarshah railway stations, he also urged his constituency to mark the month of July 2018 with tree planting and highlighted the State’s mission of “Mega Tree Plantation” in which MLAs could spend upto Rs 25 lakhs for tree plantation and awareness.

“We were able to raise the “largest green army” in the world by planting over 51 lakhs trees and have set ourselves a target of one crore trees to be planted, for which a “1926 Hello Forest” helpline has been activated. We need to understand the environment’s warnings and provide alternative sources of income to the farmers through horticultural and bamboo plantation. The Government is also working on concept of “Clean villages – Green villages” and “Clean cities – Green Cities” by planting planting trees on barren lands,” Mungantiwar said.

Maharashtra Rural Development Minister Pankaja Munde said that besides conserving the soil and water, the forest minister has interlinked employment generation with tree plantation and a healthy society lifestyle. “Maharashtra’s ‘Mazi Kanya Bhagyashri’ (My Lucky Daughter) Scheme and tree plantations should be linked to each other so that income generated from such trees planted in the name of every new-born girl can be credited in her name. A similar scheme can be envisaged for the ‘Anganwadi’ children as well,” she said while urging the Forest Department to look into this.

With the monsoon approaching, around 26.67 crore crore saplings are available with 13 crore trees to be planted and 11 crore pits already dug for tree plantation, Forest Secretary Vikas Kharge, said adding that an Information Technology cell has been established in each District Forest Officer’s office for such tree planters to record their information, while an application titled “My plant ” has been developed for recording the tree plantations on individual level.