Hill Top celebrates of Forest Day, students plant saplings

Jamshedpur: The 69th Van Mahotsav festival was organised by Forest, Environment and Water Resource Department of Jharkhand on the occasion of Forest Day at Hill Top School. The Chief Guest for the occasion was Saryu Roy, Jamshedpur MLA and state food and civil supplies minister.

Around 140 students of Hill Top School accompanied by their teachers planted trees in a ground adjacent to the forest department.

The Forest Day is a festival that was initiated by Dr. K.M. Munshi, Indian independence movement activist, politician, writer and educationist from Gujarat. He was also a lawyer and a keen environmentalist and initiated the Vanmahotsav in 1950, when he was Union Minister of Food and Agriculture, to increase the area under forest cover.

Since then Van Mahotsav a week-long festival of tree plantation is organised every year in the month of July all across the country and lakhs of trees are planted. This festival of trees has been bringing people together across the country towards the common goal of forest conservation and tree plantation.

The students were informed that forest cover is reducing & should not be disturbed. Yet if it happens, they should compensate by planting more trees. The effects of forest cover included global warming and schools being closed due to pollution in Delhi. They also highlighted that in order to widen the road between Jamshedpur & Ranchi 100-200 year old trees were cut down.

Also present were Saba Alam Ansari, D.F.O, Jamshedpur, Satnam Singh Vadhavan, Chief Forest Ranger (Ranchi), D Venkateshwaralu, Forest Ranger, Jamshedpur, Susheel Oraon, Assistant Forest Ranger, (Jamshedpur), Vishwanath Sah, Zonal Chief Forest Ranger, Ram Babu Kumar, Forest Officer, Mango, Dinesh Chandra, Vanpaal (Forester), Manoj Singh, Environmentalist and Aparna Chandra