Vijayawada: As the makers of the Pushpa film franchise, based on the infamous red sandalwood, or red sanders, smuggling from Andhra Pradesh, mint money, the Chandrababu Naidu government is seeking to earn some additional revenue from the sale of the precious logs that were illegally felled and smuggled out of the debt-ridden state
The forest department has proposed to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) that only Andhra Pradesh be allowed to sell the smuggled logs in a single-window global auction, regardless of which state they were seized in by law enforcement agencies.
The Centre is deliberating on the request in consultation with other states.
AP’s top forest department officials told ThePrint they, preferably, want all the logs of red sanders, endemic to the state, to be returned to them or, as a last option, “a lion’s share of the sale proceeds should be theirs”.
The issue of illegal felling and smuggling of red sanders, highly in demand in the international market, threatens the endangered species, worrying the Andhra Pradesh administration.
As recently as Wednesday, AP Police, acting on a tip-off, seized red sanders logs worth Rs 3.5 crore on the Chennai-Kolkata national highway, near Guntur, and arrested two smugglers from Tamil Nadu. The logs were concealed under bundles of A4 white paper sheets in a truck.
According to the forest officials, the department has a stock of 5,400 tonnes of red sander logs seized from smugglers, whereas another around 5,000 tonnes is in the custody of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, operating under the Ministry of Finance’s Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.
In addition, over 1,000 tonnes of the smuggled logs are in other states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Karnataka, seized by their police. Even far off Haryana has 120 tonnes.
If the other states and Centre concede to the demand, the Naidu government could add an extra Rs 3,000 crore—just from over the 6,000 tonnes of logs outside AP. The price of one tonne of B-grade red sanders logs sold at around Rs 50 lakh in the global e-auction conducted by the AP government in November.
“Red Sanders, as everyone knows, is only found in AP, except some on fringes of borders with Tamil Nadu which is meagre and low quality. So, naturally, we want our forest produce back while, expectantly, other states and central agencies are resistant, claiming ownership of their seized material,” a senior Indian Forest Services official told ThePrint.
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‘Prohibit other states from selling off seized logs’
Officials said that AP’s forests and environment minister Pawan Kalyan, in a representation to MoEFCC minister Bhupendra Yadav during his visit to New Delhi last month, urged “the Centre to modify rules to designate AP as the custodian for the auction of the logs seized outside AP too”.
“A single-window auction while prohibiting other states to sell off the logs, would yield good returns in global e-auction of the logs. The Centre can monitor the whole process,” Kalyan is said to have told Yadav.
Kalyan also pointed out that the Botanical Survey of India had recently proposed a single window sale-export as an advantageous mode.
Red sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus) are a tree species native to Andhra Pradesh and endemic to Chittoor, Kadapa, and Nellore areas, especially the Seshachalam forests around Tirupati.
Extraction of red sanders trees (green felling), which are on the endangered species list, is prohibited. Those cultivated outside forests are found to be lacking the desired strength and texture.
The red wood is in great demand in countries such as Japan and China, where it is used in making expensive furniture and musical instruments and is considered an auspicious gift.
Illegal felling and trade of the wood have become a thriving business for smugglers—often with political connections—over the past two or three decades as portrayed in the Allu Arjun starrers ‘Pushpa: The Rise’ and ‘Pushpa 2: The Rule’.
AP Police has arrested 17,241 woodcutters, agents and smugglers in the last 10 years—12,995 of them during Naidu’s previous tenure between 2014 and 2019. Even the sensational encounter of 20 woodcutters and smugglers in an encounter in April 2015 by a special task force proved not to be a deterrent.
Given the huge money involved, even luxury cars like Audis and BMWs, are sometimes used to sneak logs out from AP’s forests. Smuggled wood is transported by a land route through the Northeast states to Myanmar and by sea route to Singapore and Dubai.
‘Our resource, our entitlement’
In a meeting held on the matter this week, the IFS official quoted above said that states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, and West Bengal expressed opposition to handing the logs back to AP, while Assam was receptive to the idea of sharing income with AP after selling off the logs on its own.
“It is an inter-state issue, so difficult to settle. But our strong argument is that rules supporting their claims should not apply to red sanders—a state property special only to AP. It is not of universal nature like teak. We will continue to pursue it as our legal right, entitlement,” the official said.
The Andhra Pradesh forest department conducts a global auction of red sanders from time to time in which bidders from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, among other nations, participate.
There is no domestic demand as such. Yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth had, a few years ago, bought about 300 tonnes of red sanders, to explore its worth for “medicinal purposes”.
International demand for the wood also fluctuates and, at present, is low, given the state of China’s economy, officials said. At the auction in November, A-grade logs were priced at Rs 90 lakh a tonne, B-grade at around Rs 50 lakh, and C-grade at Rs 37 lakh.
However, when the demand is high, prices can sometimes go up to more than Rs 1.5 crore a tonne for top-quality wood.
The wild logs, wildfire smuggling network
The red sanders smuggling racket, as portrayed in Pushpa, operates from forest villages to international markets. Orders placed from abroad are communicated through middlemen or agents to local operators, who contact foremen supplying woodcutters from Tamil Nadu.
Men, who need money are brought in on trains or buses and, in the dark of the night, walk long distances deep into the Seshachalam forests. In some instances, corrupt lower-level forest officials guide them to the right patches.
The logs are chipped, cured, carried out of thick forests, loaded onto vehicles, and transported, concealed among materials like rice husks, watermelons, oil tankers and even ambulances.
As the movie further depicted, red sanders smuggling involves various independent gangs. It is often turf wars that result in the leak of information to law enforcement who then bust the network.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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