Diversion of forest land for red oil palm plantations in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is in violation of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, and will “open the floodgates” for similar agricultural use of forest land.
This is what a Supreme Court appointed committee noted last week while raising red flags against a proposal, which is part of the National Mission On Edible Oils-Oil Palm. A centrally sponsored scheme, the NMEO-OP was launched in 2021 with an aim to reduce India’s palm oil imports from Southeast Asia by focussing on the Northeast and Andamans. Previous schemes were then subsumed under this one.
