Rahul Somvanshi
Under the 2014 Cabinet-approved Green India Mission programme, 1.4 million hectares was the target for increasing forest cover, alongside another 1.4 million hectares for improving the quality of existing forest cover. An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, tabled on August 12, 2026, examined how well that target was met. Under the GIM component aimed at increasing forest cover, the achievement was approximately 0.034 million hectares against the 1.4-million-hectare target — a 97.57% shortfall.
That number is accurate. But it is the beginning of the story, not the full picture.
On the forest loss side: between 2001 and 2025, India lost approximately 2.4 million hectares of tree cover, according to Global Forest Watch data. From 2002 to 2025, approximately 370,000 hectares of humid primary forest were lost. Global Forest Watch explicitly notes its methodology has changed over time and its figures may differ from national statistics.
Here is why a distinction matters. Tree cover — as satellite monitoring measures it — includes plantation crops, orchards, and other managed vegetation that appears as canopy from above. In forest-monitoring datasets, deforestation generally refers to tree-cover loss associated with a longer-term land-use conversion, rather than every instance of tree-cover loss. Primary-forest datasets identify areas of mature natural forest using specific remote-sensing criteria; they should not be treated as interchangeable with all tree cover.
The CAG audit did not just report a number. It explained why the mission underperformed. The audit identified deficiencies in planning, coordination, financing and monitoring, as well as inappropriate landscape selection and lack of convergence between national schemes.
CAG reported that ₹1,149.14 crore was received through budgetary support during 2015–16 to 2024–25, while 0.14793 million hectares were treated under GIM. The audit’s point is not that nothing happened — it is that what happened fell profoundly short of the mission’s declared target.
There is also a conceptual point worth explaining. A plantation and a natural forest can differ substantially in species diversity, structure and ecosystem functions, depending on how and where they are established. Counting a plantation as “forest cover” is permitted under current classification systems, but the two are not necessarily ecologically equivalent.
The CAG audit documents a major shortfall in the Green India Mission’s forest-cover expansion component, while satellite-based datasets separately measure tree-cover and primary-forest loss. The two datasets should be read as different measures rather than combined into one statistic.
