Centre clearing green hurdles to divert major reserve forest area for Amaravati

Hyderabad, Oct 28: In a shocking move, the NDA government is getting ready to give clearance for the 'diversion' of a 19,256 hectares of reserve forest area in Guntur and Krishna districts for the development of Amaravati. Sources in the know said the Andhra Pradesh government is putting pressure on the Modi government to clear up all green hurdles so that this huge chunk of forest land can be made available for its urbanisation initiatives. Environmentalists and forest officials are aghast by the development as this move will wipe out at least 20 sq km of natural forest. AP government is striving to justify its bid to acquire reserve forest land. In the process, it is trying to invoke the Andhra Pradesh State Reorganisation Act. Also, the state Forest Department is claiming that there is no problem with this. In fact, the department is stating that it is ready to provide an alternative 40,000 hectares of land for afforestation purpose in accordance with conservation laws, sources said. However, environmentalists are suspicious by the whole exercise. Meanwhile, the state government is said to have transferred the principal chief conservator of forests AV Joseph, an IFS officer having commitment to forest and wildlife conservation efforts, to an innocuous post. Joseph is the seniormost IFS officer in AP and has service till 2017.