Forest dept starts drive action against illegal sawmills in Pune

The Pune forest department on Friday launched a drive and seized 3 illegal sawmills in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Cases have been registered against the sawmill owners, said officials.

A team of forest officials including Tukaram Jadhav, range forest officer, along with eight other forest officials raided three sawmills in various areas including Kiwale, Mamurdi and Ravet. Three separate cases were registered against Preetam Kankanriya, owner of the Ravet-based sawmill, Shreyas Talkekar in Kivale-based sawmill and Abdul Khan, owner of Mamurdi-based sawmill under various sections of Maharashtra Forest rules 2014, Maharashtra Felling of Trees (Regulation) Act 1964 and Indian Forest Protection Act 1927.

Cutting machines ranging between 24-42 inches and circular cutters above 14 inches were seized during the action. Also, 2.909 cubic metres of wood logs and 10 cubic metres of firewood were seized from Ravet mill, 24 cubic metres of firewood were seized from Kivale mill and from Mamurdi mill machinery was seized by the forest officials.

NR Praveen, chief conservator of forest, Pune circle, said, “As a part of routine procedure, every year the sawmills have to renew their licences by December. Those who fail to get the licence renewal are being sealed by the official. This year, during our inspection, we saw that some mills are operating illegally without obtaining any consent to operate, hence we have launched a special drive to seal those sawmills.”

The department is also investigating from where the wood is coming to these mills. However, lack of data is making it difficult for the forest officials to verify the claims made by the mill workers as well as the owners.

Speaking about the challenges in the investigation, Ram Dhotre, deputy conservator of forest (land), Pune forest department, said, “Each unit must maintain a record of goods coming to the unit, how much is being processed and the quantity of goods that are sold out. However, in recent cases, we found that this record is not maintained at all by the mill workers or the owners. Hence it is challenging for us to track the further involvement and also the verification of the claims made by the owner. We have to rely on the information provided by them only.”

Meanwhile, the investigation revealed that the sawmills get maximum demand from hotels, packaging industry and also for household use. Such illegal small units while catering for the demand of these industries, also pose a significant threat to the forest cover in Maharashtra as well as other states in the country as trees like Pine are also imported illegally to these mills. Apart from this indigenous tree species like neem, tamrind, Senegalia catechu commonly known as Khair tree, teak and sandalwood are found during most of the seizure action.