The Environment Ministry has amended forest conservation norms by removing the mandatory requirement of having a nodal officer conduct a field inspection for every project involving more than 100 hectares of forest land diversion.
With this move, it has now allowed conservator, chief conservator or regional chief conservator of forests to do such an examination.
Earlier, for every proposal that involved more than 40 hectares of forest land, the conservator of forests of the forest circle in question had to carry out a field inspection — in addition to the verification by the divisional forest officer (DFO) concerned.
Similarly, for a project involving more than 100 hectares of forest land, apart from the DFO’s verification, a field inspection had to be carried out by the nodal officer, who would be holding the rank of chief conservator of forests or above.
The amendment to the sub-rule (12) in rule 9 of the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Rules, 2023, formerly known as the Forest