RS questions govt on Uttarakhand fire: Javadekar says more forest fires in first four months than entire 2015

New Delhi: The government on Monday said that the number of forest fires in the first four months this year has already exceeded the last year's total of such incidents.The Centre has formulated a contingency plan for dealing with such crisis. Till April 21, a total of 20,667 incidentsof forest fires have taken place. In 2015, the total number of forest fire incidents were 15,937, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

He said that this year, 291 forest fires have broken out in Uttarakhand, 2,422 in Chhattisgarh and 2,349 in Odisha. Madhya Pradesh reported 2,238 forest fires this year against 294 such incidents last year.Maharashtra reported 1,638 forest fires this year while the number is 1,719 in Assam. 1,416 fire forest incidents took place in Andhra Pradesh, the minister said quoting the figures of Forest Survey of India.In 2014, 19,054 forest fire incidents were reported, while 18,451 forest fire incidents took place in 2013.