Guwahati, April 6: The Assam government on Monday urged the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to vacate its stay on the deployment of around 1,600 Assam Forest Protection Force (AFPF) personnel for the April 9 assembly elections.

In a reply submitted before the NGT’s eastern zonal bench in Kolkata, the state argued that the plea against its March 19 order mobilizing AFPF personnel to assist Assam Police had wrongly “stretched” the provisions of the Biological Diversity Act to cover manpower deployment.

On April 2, the tribunal had stayed the order following a petition by advocate Gaurav Bansal, who claimed that diverting AFPF personnel from their primary duties of protecting biological resources amounted to a violation of statutory obligations under the Act.

The state’s environment department, in its response dated April 4, said AFPF members are armed personnel constables, sub-inspectors, inspectors and not forest officers. It emphasized that biodiversity management in Assam is overseen by 2,549 Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs), not dependent solely on AFPF staff.

“The so-called application of the Biological Diversity Act to manpower deployment is misplaced. AFPF personnel are not responsible for the protection of biological resources unless they occur in notified forests,” the reply stated. It added that biodiversity extends beyond forests to agriculture, livestock, and other resources, and that the petitioner had “stretched the provisions of the Act too far.”

The government argued that previous deployments of AFPF personnel for election duties had not compromised biodiversity protection. “It is completely wrong to say that protection of biological diversity is dependent only on these 1,600 AFPF personnel,” the reply said, urging the tribunal to vacate its April 2 order.