Sikkim will get Green Bonus: Jairam Ramesh is confident.


BIJOY GURUNG

NEW DELHI, January 18: Union Forest & Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has expressed his confidence over the inclusion of Sikkim into the elite list of Himalayan States who would be receiving ‘green bonus’ from this new fiscal season as a compensatory measure for conserving forests that act as carbon sinks.
“I am confident that Sikkim will get Green Bonus. Let us wait till the annual budget is placed”, said Ramesh today in response to the question of this Correspondent during the media-interaction session of the 10th Editors Conference on Social Sector Issues 2010 organized by Press Bureau of Information here at Shastri Bhavan.
The 13th Finance Commission had been tasked to decide the quantum of Green Bonus to five Himalayan States including Sikkim with the Centre planning to release green dividends for these environmental and forestry conscious States.

The Forest Minister said that the Finance Commission is ready to submit its report by February 25. “I am every reason to believe that the Green Bonus will be one of the recommendations. I have not seen the recommendations but from my discussions with the Chairman of the Finance Commission he was convinced on the need to give Green Bonus with States with large forest covers of which Sikkim is certainly one”, said Ramesh.

Responding to another question, the Minister said that the Ministry’s decision to put the six mega hydel power projects in North Sikkim on hold last year stands.
It may be recalled that the MoEF had put on hold six mega hydel power projects with a project capacity of 1047 MW in North Sikkim following the adverse report submitted by Centre of Inter-Disciplinary Studies (CISME).

“We have not reopened these projects above Chungthang in North Sikkim and we had an independent study which recommended these projects to be put on hold which we did,” said Ramesh. “The State Government requested us to look into this matter and later came up with their own technical counter study,” he said.

The matter is being discussed with the State Government but as of now, our decision to put on hold the hydel projects above Chungthang still stands, said the MoEF Minister. The case has not been reopened as yet, he asserted.

The projects affected by the Centre's directive include Teesta stage I (280 MW), Teesta Stage II (330 MW), Lachen (120 MW), BOP (99 MW) and Bimkyong (99 MW) and Lachung (99MW).