The Centre is pushing hard to implement its scheme for plantation of oil palm in the North East including Meghalaya.
Recently, the Union Cabinet has approved implementation of the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm. Identifying the North East region as a special focus area, the government aims to reduce import of palm oil.
Union DONER Minister G Kishan Reddy held a virtual meeting on August 31 with the Chief Ministers, Agriculture Ministers, Chief Secretaries and other senior officials of all eight North East states to discuss sectors like oil palm etc. The meeting was also attended by Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Minister of State for DONER B L Verma.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Kandu, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga, Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Y Joykumar Singh, Nagaland Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton took part at the meeting. Sikkim was represented by Tourism Minister Bedu Singh Panth and Tripura was represented by Agriculture Minister Pranajit Singha Roy.
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that there are challenges in palm oil cultivation but the newly introduced National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm is a game changer in respect to palm oil production.
“I request the states to highlight the bottlenecks in implementing the central government schemes and ways for effective implementation,” he said.
For the oil palm mission, the central government has identified the North East region as a special focus area as the target set for the North East in the next 5 years is more than 50 per cent of the overall target of 6.5 lakh hectares set for the entire nation.
Recently, Tura MP Agatha Sangma has flagged her concerns through a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding his ambitious expansion of oil palm plantations in the “biodiversity hotspot and ecologically fragile” North East region.
Palm tree is not an endemic species of plant of the North East region and large-scale adoption of a foreign species of plant, which is water intensive, harvest will definitely create irreparable ecological imbalance and distort the ground water table,” the Tura MP had said in her letter to Modi on August 28.
“Palm plantations in all certainty will denude vast swathes of land of its forest cover. Loss of habitat for the endangered wildlife will have a devastating impact,” she said in the letter.
Sangma said that widespread plantations for commercial gain in all possibilities will detach the tribesman of this prized possession of land and wreak havoc on the social fabric.
She ended her letter registering her “opposition to the unilateral imposition of the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm programme on the people of North East region” and requested the Prime Minister to have wider consultation with all stakeholders before moving forward with the decision.
