Chennai: Union Environment and Forest Minister T R Baalu on October 16 expressed unhappiness over the Tamil Nadu government's delay in the implementation of the project to clean the rivers flowing across Chennai.

"The work is going on a snail's pace. I do not know whether it would be completed by the targetted period of 2004," he told reporters.

He said like the Chennai project, his ministry had cleared six other projects to clean the rivers in the state. But only in the Vaigai river project, some progress had been made, he said.

Describing the achievements of his ministry in the last three years as "great", he said the ministry wanted to increase the forest cover in the country from the present 13.3 per cent to 25 per cent by 2007 and to 33 per cent by 2012.

The ministry had chalked out an action plan for this purpose, he said.

He said his ministry had decided to send funds for the development of forests directly to Joint Forest Administrative Committees, constituted recently.

He said the Centre had decided against involving the corporate sector in upgrading the degraded forests.

He said India would be hosting the eighth conference of parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change and Adverse Effects from October 23 to November 1 at New Delhi. Over 6000 delegates would be participating in the conference, he said.

Baalu said the Centre had approved three insect resistant Bt cotton hybrid developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company for commercial cultivation in the country.

It was also considering allowing transgenic mustard and import GM food (corn-Soya and crude degummed soya bean oil), he said.

The plan outlay for the 10th five-year Plan had been fixed at Rs 5,770 crore against an allocation of Rs 2,954 crore for the Ninth Plan, he said.

He said his ministry had approved the rope-way project from Tirupathi to Tirumala in principle, but was yet to receive a detailed project report for the environmental clearance.

On the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ministry completing three years in office on October 16, he said the period was extremely good for the country.

NDA had given a corrupt-free and scam free government for the country, he claimed.

PTI