GURGAON: Even 8 years after the Union environment ministry permitted the diversion of 51.12 hectares of forest land for Delhi-Mumbai Expressway work between Badshahpur and Sohna stretch, details of compensatory afforestation (CA) and compliance with key approval conditions remain unclear.Under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, when a project (highway, dam, mining, transmission line, etc.) needs forest land for non-forest use, the land is formally diverted after the Centre’s approval. One of the most important conditions for the approval is compensatory afforestation (CA) that compensates the loss of ‘land by land’ and loss of ‘trees by trees’.
While the forest department stated that 42,468 saplings were planted in Nuh in 2025-26 as part of CA linked to the project, there is no clarity on how much afforestation was carried out since the diversion approval in 2018, where exactly plantations were undertaken and whether conditions laid down in the Centre’s approval were complied with, including demarcation and monitoring of plantation sites.The information emerged through an RTI reply sent earlier this month by the DFO (Territorial), Gurgaon. TOI has accessed a copy of the reply.In the reply, the department said compensatory afforestation for the project was proposed in the Nuh division and Morni-Pinjore division, and DFO Nuh planted 42,468 saplings in Nuh division in 2025-26. It also stated that tree transplantation was not permitted by the environment ministry (MoEF) and hence it was not carried out.However, the reply does not specify the exact CA sites or provide a project-wise break-up of the overall plantation done against the diversion, including survival status and monitoring reports.The diversion was cleared by MoEF through an approval letter dated Aug 9, 2018, which carried compliance conditions, including demarcation and monitoring of CA plantations.Environmental activist Vaishali Rana, who sought details through RTI, alleged that information provided so far remains incomplete, with no consolidated data on how many trees were planted in total since the approval and whether plantations were undertaken and survived across both Nuh and Morni-Pinjore hills. She also alleged that CA plantations were carried out “350 km away in a different district”, calling it a violation of CA rules.Rana further pointed to a condition in the diversion approval that directed the user agency, NHAI, to install 4-foot-high cement pillars at regular intervals to demarcate the CA plantation site, and alleged that on-ground compliance was not properly verified by either the user agency or the forest department.Experts say that monitoring of CA for major infrastructure projects requires site-level public disclosure, geo-tagging and periodic survival audits to ensure that plantations translate into actual ecological compensation.At 3.6%, Haryana is one of the states with the lowest green cover in India. According to the Forest Survey of India, Gurgaon had lost 2.47 sq km of forest cover between 2019 and 2020, while the state’s total tree cover (outside forest areas) fell by 140 sq km in the same period.TOI had earlier reported that plantation drives linked to forest diversions for multiple projects in Gurgaon remained pending for years, with officials citing non-availability of land in the district for large-scale CA plantations.
