Telangana Ku Haritha Haram

What is Telangana Ku Haritha Haram?

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram is the Government of Telangana's large-scale afforestation programme, run by the Forest Department under the Environment, Forests, Science and Technology Department. The name translates roughly as "a green garland for Telangana", and it is written in Telugu as Telanganaku Haritha Haram. The then Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao inaugurated the programme on 3 July 2015.

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram's stated objective is to raise the state's green cover to 33 per cent of its geographic area, the national forest policy benchmark. To get there, the programme set a target of 230 crore seedlings, split into about 130 crore outside forest areas and about 100 crore within forest areas. Cumulative planting by 2017-18 was reported at roughly 62.63 crore saplings across three fiscal years, and drives have continued annually since, timed to the south-west monsoon so young plants establish on natural rainfall.

How the programme is organised

• State Level Steering Committee; sets targets and allocations.
• District Level Monitoring Committees; assign nursery and planting targets by mandal and department.
• Village level Haritha Rakshana Committees: protect and monitor planted saplings and report survival.
• Geo-tagging; plantation locations are geo-tagged so survival can be checked against the recorded site, not merely against distribution counts.

The seven planting models

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram uses seven distinct planting models rather than one uniform approach:

1. Avenue plantations along roads, highways and canal bunds.
2. Block plantations on wastelands and unused government land.
3. Institutional plantations on the grounds of schools, colleges, offices, temples and hospitals.
4. Tank foreshore plantations around minor irrigation tanks.
5. Homestead plantations in house compounds and backyards.
6. Agro-forestry plantations on farmland, along field bunds and as boundary rows.
7. Barren hill plantations on degraded slopes and rocky uplands.

The Forest Department was reported to manage a budget of about Rs 550 crore for the programme, with a project director drawn from the Indian Forest Service.

Who can take part in Haritha Haram, and who is not eligible for a payment?

Who can take part:

• Farmers who want saplings for field bunds, boundary rows or agro-forestry on their own land.
• Households planting fruit or shade trees in a house compound or backyard.
• Schools, colleges, offices, hospitals and temples planting on institutional grounds, usually through a bulk request on letterhead.
• Gram panchayats and urban local bodies, which place consolidated indents for avenue and block plantations.
• Self-help groups, resident welfare associations and NGOs willing to take responsibility for maintenance after planting.

Who is not eligible:

• No individual is eligible for a cash grant, subsidy or DBT payment under Telangana Ku Haritha Haram. The programme supplies planting material, not money.
• Applicants seeking to plant on forest land cannot do so on their own; planting inside notified forest area is done by the Forest Department itself.
• People seeking wage employment should approach MGNREGS at the gram panchayat, since nursery raising, pit digging and plantation maintenance work is generally taken up as MGNREGS works rather than as a Haritha Haram entitlement.
• Anyone seeking to plant on encroached or disputed land, a plantation does not create any right over the land, and the Forest Department does not supply material for such sites.

What documents are required?

For a household taking a handful of saplings, no document is normally required at all. The nursery simply issues them during the season.

How to apply for free saplings under Haritha Haram

1. Identify your nearest nursery. Ask the gram panchayat secretary in a village, or the Forest Range Officer or Forest Section Officer for the range covering your area. Nurseries are run by the Forest Department, by gram panchayats and by urban local bodies.
2. Ask before the season, not during it. Indents are consolidated ahead of the monsoon, so a request made in May or June is far more likely to be met than one made after planting has started.
3. Say what you need and where you will plant. State the number of saplings, the species you want, and whether the site is a field bund, a homestead, an institution ground or a roadside. Species allotment depends on soil, rainfall and the planting model.
4. Submit an institution letter or panchayat indent for bulk numbers. Schools, colleges, offices and panchayats requesting large batches should put the request in writing on letterhead, addressed to the Forest Range Officer or the MPDO.
5. Collect the saplings from the nursery on the date given and transport them without letting the root ball dry out.
6. Plant during the monsoon and protect the sapling with a guard or a tree-guard fence where cattle graze. Survival, not planting, is what the Haritha Rakshana Committee records.

How saplings are monitored after planting

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram's monitoring rests on the Haritha Rakshana Committees formed at village level. These committees are responsible for watering, protection from grazing, replacement of failed saplings and reporting survival to the mandal and district monitoring bodies. Geo-tagging of plantation sites lets the department verify a specific location later, which is how survival percentage rather than distribution count becomes measurable.

For a household or farmer, the practical implication is simple: the first two summers determine whether a sapling survives. Watering in the dry months after the first monsoon, and a physical guard against cattle, matter far more than the species chosen.

What has Haritha Haram achieved, and what is disputed?

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram's planting figures are large — about 62.63 crore saplings by 2017-18 against a 230 crore target, but measured forest cover gains have been considerably more modest. The India State of Forest Report 2019 recorded an increase of about 163 square kilometres in green cover over two years, well short of what the planting numbers alone would suggest. The gap is mainly a survival gap: a planted sapling only becomes green cover if it lives for several years.

The programme has also drawn criticism. Concerns raised publicly include the ecological value of monoculture plantations compared with natural regeneration, plantation drives on land used by tribal communities, and the risk that heavy emphasis on new planting diverts departmental attention from protecting existing natural forest. These are documented criticisms of the programme and are worth stating plainly alongside its scale.

Help and contacts

• Forest Range Officer / Forest Section Officer: nursery availability, species and bulk allotment
• Gram panchayat secretary, village nursery, panchayat indent and Haritha Rakshana Committee
• District Forest Officer; district-level escalation for institutions and large requests
• Forest Department, Government of Telangana, forests.telangana.gov.in

Saplings under Telangana Ku Haritha Haram are free. No nursery, official or agent is authorised to charge for them, and no individual cash benefit exists under the programme to be "arranged" by anyone.

How to check the status of your sapling request

Telangana Ku Haritha Haram has no online application, login, or tracking number, so there is nothing to check on a portal. What "status" means depends on who asked for the saplings.

If you are a household or an individual farmer:

• A small, casual request is usually met on the spot at the nursery during the planting season, so there is no waiting period to track.
• If the nursery told you to come back on a later date because stock was being readied, the only way to check is to go back to the same nursery in-charge or ask the gram panchayat secretary who took your name. There is no reference number issued.

If you are a school, office, institution, or gram panchayat that submitted a written indent:

1. Keep a copy of the letter or indent you submitted, with the date and the name of the official who received it (Forest Range Officer, Forest Section Officer, or MPDO).
2. Follow up in person or by phone with that same office roughly two to three weeks after submission, since indents are consolidated in batches ahead of the monsoon rather than processed one by one.
3. Ask specifically whether your indent has been included in the current season's allocation or deferred to the next planting window, since a common outcome is that a late indent simply rolls over to the following year rather than being refused outright.
4. If there is no response at the range level, escalate to the District Forest Officer's office, quoting the date of your original letter.
5. Once saplings are collected, ask the Haritha Rakshana Committee or panchayat secretary how survival will be recorded for your site, since geo-tagged plantations are checked later against that record rather than against the original indent.

There is no SMS alert, email confirmation, or helpline number published for this programme, so a paper trail (a dated copy of your own request) is the only proof you will have that a request was made.

Common reasons a sapling request goes unmet

Because Haritha Haram is a supply-of-material programme and not a cash scheme, "rejection" in practice means a request that is not fulfilled, deferred, or refused at the nursery. The recurring reasons are:

• Request made outside the planting window. Indents are consolidated well before the south-west monsoon. A request made after nurseries have already dispatched their season's stock is commonly pushed to the next year rather than filled immediately. Fix: ask in May or June, before the season starts.
• No written letter for a bulk request. Nurseries and range offices generally will not set aside a large batch on a verbal request alone. Schools, colleges, offices, and panchayats need a signed letter or indent on letterhead stating the quantity and purpose. Fix: submit the request in writing to the Forest Range Officer or MPDO, not just verbally.
• Site falls inside notified forest land. Individuals cannot plant, or receive saplings for planting, inside a notified forest area; that planting is carried out by the Forest Department itself. Fix: if your site is genuinely near forest land, check its status with the Range Officer before asking for saplings, and if it is forest land, there is no individual route to plant there.
• Site is disputed or encroached land. The Forest Department does not supply planting material for a site under land dispute, since a plantation cannot be used to establish a claim over land. Fix: clear title or panchayat-recorded possession is generally expected before a request for that site is entertained.