Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday, 12 July 2026 congratulated Gandhinagar after the Gujarat capital set a Guinness World Record by planting 3.61 lakh saplings in just one hour, calling it a monumental milestone towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Progress with Nature.'

Context

Shah posted on X applauding the feat, writing: 'Today, Gandhinagar set a Guinness World Record by planting 3.61 lakh saplings in just one hour. A monumental milestone towards realizing Modi Ji's vision of 'Progress with Nature.'' He specifically credited the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the 25,000 volunteers who participated in the drive. The post carried the hashtag #एक_पेड़_माँ_के_नाम ('Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam' — 'One Tree in Mother's Name'), the national afforestation campaign under which the plantation was organised.

Policy Backdrop

The Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam campaign was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on World Environment Day 2024 as a citizen-centric push to expand India's green cover by urging every Indian to plant a sapling in honour of their mother. The initiative sits alongside state-level Van Mahotsav programmes and urban greening efforts under the Smart Cities framework. India's updated Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement include ambitious tree-cover expansion targets, and mass plantation drives of this kind are among the primary instruments deployed to meet them.

Large-scale, time-bound plantation events have become a recurring feature of India's environmental calendar, with state governments and municipal bodies competing to set and break records as a way of generating civic participation and political visibility for green causes.

Stakeholders and Impact

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation coordinated the logistics of mobilising 25,000 volunteers across Gandhinagar within a single hour — a feat of civic organisation as much as an environmental one. Urban residents of Gujarat stand to benefit from improved air quality, reduced urban heat island effect, and enhanced green public spaces if the planted saplings are maintained and survive to maturity.

The event also underscores the role of municipal bodies as frontline executors of centrally driven environmental policy, a pattern seen increasingly across Indian cities as national campaigns are localised through civic administration.

What's Next

Attention will now turn to follow-up monitoring of the saplings planted in Gandhinagar, as survival rates after mass plantation drives have historically been a subject of scrutiny by environmental observers. State-level tallies of total saplings planted under the Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam campaign by year-end are expected to be released, and other cities may attempt similar Guinness record bids to showcase their own green credentials. The Gandhinagar milestone is likely to add momentum to the campaign ahead of the next World Environment Day.