Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupendra Yadav virtually flagged off a timber-laden truck from Gandhidham in Gujarat‘s Kutch district and another loaded with forest products from Jammu and Kashmir after QR-coded transit permits were generated for the twin cargos by NTPS.

The truck from Kutch, the western-most district of India, is bound for West Bengal in the eastern part of the country. The truck from Jammu and Kashmir in north India will travel south and is bound for Tamil Nadu, the southern tip of the country.

“NTPS will help strengthen the journey towards greater transparency which is Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji’s guarantee for India’s development… This initiative is poised to facilitate the seamless transportation of timber and various forest products across the country. Its impact extends beyond merely encouraging agroforestry and tree farming; it also promises to incentivize the entire value chain,” Yadav said in a statement while inaugurating the system.

The NTPS, he said, will become a one-nation-one-pass regime in India for transporting forest products.

NTPS is a web-portal as well as mobile application system, facilitating online filing of applications from anywhere in the country for seeking permission to transport forest products as well as for obtaining no-objection certificate (NOC).

Applicants can file their applications by logging into https://ntps.nic.in.

So far, merchants and farmers doing agro-forestry were required to obtain transit permits from multiple states for inter-state transportation of their forest and agro-forestry products, including timber.

The same rules were applicable on imported forest products as every state forest department constituted a separate jurisdiction with its own set of rules of issuing NOCs and transit permits. Also, a merchant was required to apply separately with each state forest department through whose jurisdiction he wanted to transport the produce.

“But the new system does away with the requirement to file multiple applications for transportation of one lot of forest products. Instead of regional languages, the permit issued by NTPS will be a QR-coded, machine-read permit which can be decoded by forest department of any state of the country,” K Ramesh, nodal officer for implementation of NTPS in Gujarat told The Indian Express,

He said this will reduce the time taken for obtaining permits from multiple jurisdictions as usually various jurisdictions were issuing permits after physically inspecting forest products. This meant that at every state border, the consignment would be inspected before issuance of a permit, Ramesh said.

Incidentally, Kandla port, near Gandhidham, is where the largest quantity of timber imported into India lands. Ramesh, who is chief conservator of forests of Junagadh territorial forest circle further said that timber merchants have welcomed the new system, saying it will increase the ease of doing business.