MINISTER OF STATE FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT(SHRI SISIR KUMAR ADHIKARI)
(a)to (d) No Sir,Government is not formulating at present any plan to utilize Non
Forest land and barren land for growing bio-fuel in the country including
Jharkhand No Land survey has been conducted State wise for the purpose
however the Funds released by Department of Land Resources during Financial
year 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 are annexed as Annexure ? I. Further the Status
in brief of Bio-diesel Programme under Ministry of Rural Development
(Department of Land Resources) is as under:
(i) Proposal for launching demonstration phase of the National Mission on
Bio-diesel was considered by Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
and it was referred to Group of Ministers (GoM).
(ii) The recommendations of GoM were submitted to the Cabinet.The
Cabinet in its meeting held on 11.9.2008 referred the matter to GoM again
to sort out the outstanding issues.
(iii) GoM met on 24.2.2009 and the proposal of the Ministry of Rural
Development including establishing a National Mission on Bio-diesel was
approved by the GoM, in principle, subject to the following:
(a) The demonstration phase can be taken up only after an
assessment is carried out of the plantation work already
undertaken in the country and positive feed back
received, and availability of budget.
(b) Research and Development work to be coordinated as
proposed under the National Policy on Bio-fuels with
allocations for R&D to be made under the budgets of
the respective Ministries/Departments and Agencies.
(c) The Policy Coordination Committee, as proposed in the
proposal of MoRD, need not be set up in view of the
policy coordination mechanisms already proposed in the
National Policy on Bio-fuels.
Recommendations made by the Group of Ministers on the proposal of the
MoRD on Establishment of the National Mission on Bio-diesel and launch of its
demonstration phase (phase-I) were included in the Cabinet Note submitted by
the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy on 9th July, 2009 for approval of
Cabinet. The Cabinet considered the above Note of MNRE in its meeting held on
23rd July, 2009 and approved the proposals contained in paragraph above.
As per the Cabinet decision, further necessary steps to carry out the impact
assessment study for the plantation work already undertaken in the country is
being done by this Ministry.
(e) & (f) Government of Andhra Pradesh has forwarded a proposal to
sanction Research Development Project on Bio-diesel with an estimated cost of
Rs.2745.87 lakhs for five years 2008-09 to 2012 ? 13 and to release year wise
funds to Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), International
Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Central Research
Institute for Dry Land Agriculture (CRIDA), National Bureau of Plant Genetic
Resources (NBPGR), Directorate of Oil Seeds Research (DOR) and Indian
Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT).
However, an amount of Rs.10.75 cores was sanctioned during financial
year 2005-06 to Govt. of Andhra Pradesh for raising seedlings of bio-fuel plants.
No funds were released after that.
