Earth-cutting under the nose of forest personnel!

From our Correspondent

DIMORIA, Nov 17: The Forest authorities simply seem content to look the other way when wrongdoings are taking place right under their nose. Example? Take Dimoria hills as a case study.

It was the other day when State Forest Minister Etua Munda ordered an inquiry into the rampant and illegal felling of Segun trees in the reserve forest at Mohpur under Sopur Forest Range Office in the Dimoria area. Is there any change in activities that are damaging for the forest cover in the area? "Certainly not," the people of the locality like to say. Even after the minister making an on-the-spot visit to the denuded forest in the Dimoria area, illegal and rampant earth-cutting is taking place at Topatali, that to, right under the nose of Sopur Forest Range office. Rampant cutting of red soil in the area continues to add to the denudation of the landscape of the hill at Topatali.

The hill at Topatali is located near the road from tiol Highway-37 to Umsiang along the Assam-Meghalaya border. The area is not that far from the Forest Range Office there. However, some local people allege that some unscrupulous people have been out to carry rampant earth-cutting in the area under the very nose of forest personnel. The allegation doing the rounds is that the earth-cutters have an unholy nexus with the Forest Range Office there, and that has made the forest personnel look the other way when illegalities do take place right under their nose.

Keeping an eye on the aggravating environmental imbalance in the area and the State as well, the Kamrup (M) district administration has issued an order banning earth-cutting in the entire district. However, the unscrupulous earth-cutters in the Dimoria area have been cutting earth from the hill right under forest personnel, as though the area has been enjoying some sort of immunity from the prohibitory order.

Meanwhile, a section of ture lovers squarely blames it on the Sopur Forest Range Office. They say that the illegal earth-cuttings do take place in the area due to utter negligence on the part of the forest office as forest personnel manning the office do enjoy ill-gotten gains. The hills in the Dimoria area are being denuded one after another, leading animals frequenting human-inhabited areas.