Between 2016-17 and 2018-19, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), along with its 10 regional offices, gave permission to cut 6,944,608 trees across the country for various projects. The data was provided as a response to a question asked in the Rajya Sabha on November 25, 2019. The compensatory afforestation that the minister was talking about is carried out under the provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. The Act stipulates that whenever forest land is diverted for non-forestry purpose like mining, compensatory afforestation has to be undertaken on twice the amount of forest land diverted, and preferably on revenue land. Many tribal rights activists have taken issue with compensatory afforestation as it is done on lands over which tribal communities have customary rights.
— source downtoearth.org.in | 26 Nov 2019