Forests as a lifeline, conservation as a generational duty — Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu took that message to the hills of Bilaspur district on Friday, 14 August 2026, addressing a public gathering at Government Senior Secondary School, Dadhol, on the occasion of the 77th State-Level Van Mahotsav.

A 76-year-old tradition lands in Dadhol

Van Mahotsav — India's annual tree-plantation festival — has been observed across the country since 1950, when Union Minister K.M. Munshi launched it to build a culture of afforestation. Himachal Pradesh, whose Himalayan forests anchor water security, biodiversity and tourism, has made the festival a fixture in its conservation calendar. The 77th edition brought the state-level event to Bilaspur, a district whose landscape straddles the Gobind Sagar reservoir and the lower Shivalik ranges.

Addressing the rally, Sukhu framed forest protection not as a government programme but as a civic obligation. 'हमारे वन हिमाचल प्रदेश की जीवनरेखा हैं' ['Our forests are the lifeline of Himachal Pradesh'], he said, adding that their conservation is 'the responsibility of the present generation and our duty towards generations to come.'

From tree-planting to a jan-andolan

The Chief Minister's sharpest pitch was for scale: he said his government's aim is to give environmental protection the character of a jan-andolan — a people's movement. The framing echoes a broader national and state-level push for community participation in natural resource management, moving conservation beyond forest departments and into villages, schools and panchayats.

Sukhu also used the platform to outline his administration's wider agenda — improvements in education and health quality, new employment and self-employment avenues for youth, rural development, and the empowerment of farmers and orchardists, a politically significant constituency in Himachal's apple-belt economy.

Who shared the stage in Dadhol

The gathering drew several senior figures from the ruling establishment. Technical Education Minister Rajesh Dharmaini, MLA Suresh Kumar, Himachal Pradesh Forest Development Corporation Vice-Chairman Kehar Singh Khachi, and former MLAs Bambar Thakur and Tilakraj were among those present — a line-up that signals the government's intent to project Van Mahotsav as a broad political and administrative priority, not a departmental footnote.

Himachal's forests cover roughly 27 percent of the state's geographical area, and their health directly shapes river flows, agricultural water availability and the tourism economy that underpins livelihoods across the mountain state. Whether the jan-andolan call translates into measurable plantation targets and rural employment linkages will be the metric to watch when the assembly reconvenes.