Chief Secretary, Iqbal Khandey, Wednesday called for widespread afforestation in the catchment area of various Hydel projects and simultaneously taking up various engineering and geo-technical measures to stabilize the slopes surrounding such projects.Chairing the 89th meeting of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), here in which several proposals for allowing the use of forest land were cleared, Chief Secretary asked the Forest and Soil Conservation department to monitor the afforestation carried by the user agencies along with the scientific disposal of muck at the designated dumping sites and report the findings to the FAC.
Meanwhile, the FAC cleared the revised proposal to allow use of 146 Ha of Forest land for the construction of Pakal Dul HEP falling in Marwah Forest Division, use of 372 Ha Forest land for laying 400 KV Double Circuit, Samba-Amargarh (Sopore) Transmission Line passing through Kathua, Jammu, Reasi, Nowshera, Rajouri, Poonch, Shopian and Pir Panjal Forest Divisions and use of 20.3 Ha Forest land for laying of 400 KV D/C Kishenpur-Wagoora T/L with pot head yard Baglihar HEP Stage-II in Ramban and Batote Divisions.
The 400 KV D/C Samba- Amargarh T/L, is expected to be completed by December 2017 and will establish a highly reliable link of more than 1000MW power exchange between the J&K Grid and National Grid.The FAC also gave clearance to other proposals including the proposal to allow use of 0.4 Ha Forest land for laying 132 KV D/C T/L from South Portal of Nashri Tunnel to Switch Yard falling in Udhampur Forest Division, 5Ha Forest land in Reasi Forest Division for construction of Escape Tunnel on Katra-Dharam section of Udhampur-Baramulla Rail Link Project, 3 Ha State land for construction of Polytechnic College at Jaganoo in Social Forestry Division Udhampur besides 1.85 Ha Forest land in Kathua Forest Division for construction of road from Nud to Bharat Garh and 0.5 Ha Forest land for construction of road from Nabna to Chungan falling in Poonch Forest Division.Financial Commissioner, Revenue, Dr Arun Kumar, Commissioner Secretary Finance, Navin K Choudhary, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, J&K, A K Singh, Chief Wildlife Warden, Deepak Khanna, Director Soil Conservation, Ravi Kesar, Director Environment and Remote Sensing, Suresh Chugh, Ex-Official members, Prof S P Singh Dutta and Dr G A Bhat and other senior officers were present in the meeting.