Ranchi, Aug. 17: Criticised by Jharkhand High Court for failing to protect its green cover, the state government has finally woken up to the need to transplant fully grown trees from one place to another instead of uprooting them to facilitate various projects.

If all goes well, the state forest department will rope in one agency or more by next month for transplanting the trees. According to a source in the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) wing of the state forest department, they were moving cautiously to hire the agency/agencies.

"Whoever applies for the transplantation job should have at least three years' experience in this field in the country. The company should also have a qualified team of at least one tree biologist and/or silviculturist and a minimum of 10 tree transplanters, besides adequate number of complementary machines and other requisite resources to successfully carry out the task in time," he said.

Concerned over mindless felling of trees in the name of development, Jharkhand High Court imposed a total ban on cutting of trees while hearing a PIL in June last year.

Again, two weeks ago, it refused to vacate its ban order and went on to criticise the government, stating that when it came to buying helicopters, it acted swiftly but was doing precious little for buying a tree transplanter.

Speaking to The Telegraph on Wednesday, principal chief conservator of forest A.K. Prabhakar confirmed that they had initiated the process to outsource the job of transplanting trees till the time they were able to purchase a tree transplanter.

"A couple of days ago, we floated an expression of interest (EoI) on our website and also in papers, inviting specialised agencies to come forward to take up this job in Jharkhand. So, if all goes well, we should be in a position to hire agency/agencies by September," Prabhakar said.

Asked specifically if the government was considering purchasing a tree transplanter, he didn't say anything concrete. "The machine is highly expensive. It will take time to procure/import the same," he added.

If another source is to be believed, a proposal to procure a tree transplanter had been sent to the government a couple of months ago. A final decision is pending.

Across the state, currently there are around 25,000 trees that are earmarked for felling for various development works ranging from road widening to building bridges among other projects. But the felling process is stalled for around a year even though the projects have received environmental clearances or are in different phases of getting clearances, officials said.

Though the forest department often stresses that it plants double the number of trees that are chopped off, such claims are always contested at the ground level given how new saplings die owing to improper care.