Union Jal Shakti Minister C. R. Paatil participated in a large-scale tree plantation event held under the 'Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam 3.0' campaign on Sunday, 14 June 2026, expressing joy and gratitude at joining the environmental conservation pledge. The event was attended by Member of Parliament Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal and other dignitaries.

Context

Paatil shared his participation on X in Gujarati, writing that he felt 'anand ane dhanyatani lagni' (a feeling of joy and gratitude) upon joining the sacred resolve for environmental protection at the grand plantation programme. He described tree plantation not merely as an event, but as a collective commitment to securing a greener, healthier, and more prosperous future for coming generations.

The minister credited the campaign's inspiration to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose call has shaped the drive into a form of jan andolan — a people's movement — combining maternal veneration with responsibility towards nature.

Policy Backdrop

The Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam campaign — translating to 'One Tree in the Name of Mother' — was first rolled out nationally in 2024 to mark environmental awareness, encouraging citizens to plant trees as a tribute to their mothers. The current 3.0 iteration represents a scaling of that mass-participation model.

The campaign sits within the broader Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) framework that PM Modi announced in 2022 to mainstream pro-planet behaviours at the individual and community level. India's afforestation commitments under international climate agreements have provided the long-term policy scaffold for such drives, complemented by the National Mission for a Green India approved under the National Action Plan on Climate Change.

The hashtags #ViksitBharat and #MissionLiFE used by Paatil signal the government's deliberate framing of green action as integral to India's 2047 development vision, linking environmental targets to the national aspiration of a developed India.

Stakeholders and Impact

Indian citizens and state forest departments are the primary participants and implementers of the campaign, with mass plantation events organised across constituencies. The presence of Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, MP, underscores the role of elected representatives in mobilising local participation at the grassroots level.

By framing tree plantation as matru vandana — veneration of the mother — the campaign taps into cultural sentiment to drive voluntary civic action, a model successive governments have used to meet afforestation targets while building public ownership of environmental goals.

What's Next

Attention will turn to the reported scale of participation and, critically, the survival rates of saplings planted across editions — a metric that determines whether mass plantation drives translate into measurable forest cover gains. Any linkage to updated State Action Plans on Climate Change or parliamentary deliberations on the Green India Mission budget will indicate how the campaign feeds into formal policy accounting. With the Viksit Bharat 2047 framework explicitly incorporating green growth targets, successive editions of Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam are likely to be benchmarked against India's nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement.