Fund crunch hits Karnataka's tiger reserves

The fanfare surrounding 50 years of tiger conservation seems to have tapered off.

Karnataka’s tiger reserves are in a crisis as the Centre has released only half the funds allocated in last year’s budget, thereby blocking the matching grant from the state government.

For 2022-23, the Centre had sanctioned Rs 31.59 crore for the five tiger reserves in Karnataka. Nearly a month after the end of the financial year, only Rs 15.79 crore has been released. Consequently, the state government has released only Rs 13.39 crore of its total share of Rs 28.91 crore.

The Bandipur Tiger Reserve, visited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, received only Rs 4.85 crore from the Centre as against the sanctioned amount of Rs 9.7 crore. Kali, Bhadra and BRT reserves also received only half of the sanctioned amounts.

Under Project Tiger, each tiger reserve has to prepare an annual plan of operation (APO) — a budget document — which will be approved by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under the Union environment ministry. The Centre provides 50 per cent of the approved amount for recurring expenditures like staff salaries, fire line creation and other works, and 60 per cent for non-recurring works like borewells, building ponds and other essential infrastructure.

Sources in the NTCA attributed the delay to teething troubles of the new public funds management system (PFMS).

“The system was introduced to bring transparency as many states were not releasing their share of funds. It is true that Karnataka has been in the clear when it comes to compliance. But the mistake of a few has hurt all states,” the source said.

Not the first time

Funding data for the last five years shows that the Centre has not released 23 per cent of the total allocation to Karnataka reserves in 2020-21 and 15 per cent in 2019-20. Even as far back as 2018-19, the Centre released Rs 21.97 crore as against Rs 24.12 crore.

Former principal chief secretary of forest B K Singh said some state governments have not been repaying the unspent amount of the previous year, which has forced the Centre to take a strict stance. "States need to pull up their socks," he said.

An official, however, said the problem was systemic. "The APOs for last year were approved only in February, just a month before the end of the year. This year too, we are headed to a similar crisis. The NTCA has communicated some tentative amount for each of the five reserves. However, the fund is far too less considering the expenditure and pending amount," the official added.

DH spoke to directors of two tiger reserves who said the salary expenditures were largely met but the fund for works have not been paid. "The only relief is that the frontline staff are paid, which helps to fight fire incidents and poaching. But any delay in this year's allocation means we are back in crisis," the official said.