In a surprise move, the Mukerji Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MEF) has recommended that forest land be given to industry for plantations. This comes as a welcome relief to the beleaguered paper industry that has been demanding the same for nearly four years without success. In fact, on two previous occasions the move had been scuttled by severe opposition from the environmentalists who had argued that giving forest land to industry for raising plantations to meet their raw material needs violating the National Forest Policy (NFP) of 1988 and the amended Forest Conservation Act (FCA) of 1980.