Dec 26, 2018
In 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir government quietly approved two proposals to chop down thousands of trees in the state. For months, towering pines from Jammu to Kashmir were axed to pave the way for transmission lines, needed to import more power to the power-deficit Valley.
Official documents show more than 60,000 forest trees were chopped. But the whole enterprise was kept a secret, so much so that the loss wasn’t discovered until earlier this year. And by then the damage had already been done.