NEW DELHI: The Green India Mission was built on an idea, and the idea was addition. Not a new pot of money so much as a way of making several existing pots pull in one direction — compensatory afforestation funds, the rural employment guarantee, the States’ own plantation work, all aligned on the same landscape at the same time. The Comptroller and Auditor General has now examined ten years of it, and the finding is about the addition.
Performance Audit Report No. 4 of 2026 on the Green India Mission, Union Government, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, was tabled in Parliament on 12 August 2026. It examined planning, implementation and monitoring across 16 States and Union Territories for which the Ministry had approved physical and financial targets, over 2015-16 to 2024-25.
What the auditor found
Convergence — the whole strategy — was absent at every institutional level. Mission activities were not effectively aligned with CAMPA, with MGNREGS or with other Central and State afforestation work; Nagar Van Yojana and School Nursery Yojana ran in silos; collative Annual Plans of Operation were not received. The envisaged bottom-up approach was not followed in identifying areas or assigning targets. Although vulnerability was a stated criterion, landscapes of low to moderate priority were selected over those more exposed to climate change.
On money: only six of 68 sampled Annual Plans of Operation reached the Ministry before the financial year began — 8.82 per cent, this desk’s arithmetic — and none was approved on time. Against an outlay of ₹2,000 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs from the Twelfth Plan for the scheme’s first four years, together with ₹400 crore from Thirteenth Finance Commission grants towards the States’ share, only ₹1,149.14 crore came through budgetary support across ten years of implementation. The auditor puts that at 47.88 per cent; recomputed here from ₹1,149.14 crore against ₹2,400 crore, it is 47.88 per cent, and the report’s arithmetic holds. Eight States and Union Territories did not maintain Annual Accounts, and where accounts existed they were often unaudited or at odds with subsidiary records.
On outcomes: against a target of 1.4 million hectares, improvement in forest cover quality was observed on 0.11384 million hectares — a shortfall of 91.87 per cent. Against the same 1.4 million hectare target, an increase in forest cover was observed on 0.03409 million hectares, a shortfall of 97.57 per cent. Fourteen States did not provide the required public web-links. Audit found inflated data and achievements overstated on unvalidated KML files, and GIS analysis showing that 70 per cent of sampled sites carried no noticeable change attributable to the Mission. Expenditure of ₹3.50 crore on flux towers in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, built to quantify carbon sequestration, ended in idling infrastructure for want of planning by ICFRE on maintenance and upkeep.
Blitz Data Card
Green India Mission, 2015-16 to 2024-25
| Parameter / Metric | Details / Value |
|---|---|
| Sanctioned support (CCEA ₹2,000 cr + FC ₹400 cr) | ₹2,400 cr |
| Received through budgetary support, 10 years | ₹1,149.14 cr |
| Convergence funding not secured | ₹10,600 cr |
| Forest cover quality improved, of 1.4 mha target | 0.11384 mha |
| Forest cover increased, of 1.4 mha target | 0.03409 mha |
| Comparison, to scale: the two shortfalls | 91.87% and 97.57% |
| Blitz calculation: 10,600 ÷ 1,149.14 | 9.22× |
| Blitz calculation: 1,149.14 ÷ 10 years | ₹114.91 cr/yr |
| Blitz calculation: (0.11384 + 0.03409) ÷ 2.8 mha | 5.28% |
| Blitz calculation: 6 ÷ 68 plans on time | 8.82% |
| Ministry’s reply / Action Taken Note | NOT ON THE RECORD READ |
| What India gains | A named, fixable cause |
What India gains: India has committed a forest and tree carbon sink to the world, and a mission designed to deliver part of it. An audit that identifies the binding constraint as coordination rather than money is the most useful kind, because coordination can be fixed inside a financial year and at no new cost to the exchequer. Verified on: cag.gov.in, the Supreme Audit Institution of India. Primary source: Press release of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, New Delhi, 13 August 2026, on C&AG’s Performance Audit Report No. 4 of 2026, Green India Mission (Union Government: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change), tabled in Parliament on 12 August 2026. Read in full by this desk. The tabled report itself was not opened this slot and no paragraph number is cited here.
The figure the report does not compute
Two numbers in the report belong beside each other and are printed pages apart. The Mission received ₹1,149.14 crore in budgetary support across ten years. The convergence it failed to secure was worth ₹10,600 crore. The money that did not arrive because the scheme would not join up was 9.22 times the money that did arrive through its own budget line — this desk’s division, and it is the sentence that explains the outcome figures. A mission whose design assumed convergence, and which then did not converge, was not underfunded so much as unassembled. Its own budget was never meant to do the work alone; on the auditor’s account, it was left to.
Set against ten years, ₹1,149.14 crore is ₹114.91 crore a year for a mission operating across sixteen States and Union Territories. And the two achieved areas taken together, 0.14793 million hectares against a combined target of 2.8 million hectares, come to 5.28 per cent. Both are this desk’s arithmetic on the auditor’s figures.
What the audit found working
One finding runs the other way and Blitz carries it deliberately, because a demonstration that the target is reachable is the most useful thing in any audit. Of all the States examined, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were the only two that conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015 to 2025. They are also the two States where the flux towers were installed. Whatever went wrong with the towers’ upkeep afterwards, two State forest establishments did the measurement work that the Mission’s own logic required and that fourteen others did not. That is not a small thing, and it is a template that exists rather than one that has to be invented.
What the record does not yet show
This piece is an account of an institution’s own finding. It is not an indictment, it names no individual as culpable and it imputes no motive to any officer, department or State. Every figure above is the auditor’s, in the auditor’s own words and with the auditor’s own qualifications, except where it is expressly marked as this desk’s arithmetic. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s reply, and any Action Taken Note, do not appear on the press release this desk read, and the tabled report was not opened this slot. The Ministry’s response is therefore recorded here as not established, and no characterisation of it is offered. Under §4C a finding whose reply exists is never carried without the reply; the reply’s existence could not be established either way, and that gap is declared rather than papered over. Nor is anything here sub judice.
Corrective advice, to speed the work
The auditor has already named the binding constraint, and it is not money. The smallest sufficient remedy is a single sheet: one collative Annual Plan of Operation per landscape, carrying alongside the Mission’s own allocation the CAMPA, MGNREGS and State scheme money committed to the same hectares in the same year, signed by the State’s nodal officer before the financial year opens. Six of 68 arrived on time; a plan that has to be co-signed by the schemes it depends on is a plan the other schemes have a reason to return. And the flux towers in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are built and paid for. An annual maintenance line for two towers is a very small sum beside ₹3.50 crore already spent, and it would restore the one carbon measurement the Mission possesses.
