Every day, a tree. That is the pledge Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been keeping — and on Tuesday, 11 August 2026, he kept it again, joining environment enthusiasts in New Delhi for a sapling-planting session and using the occasion to mobilise citizens for a mass plantation drive the following morning.

In his post, Chouhan wrote: 'प्रतिदिन पौधरोपण के संकल्प के क्रम में आज नई दिल्ली में पर्यावरण प्रेमियों के साथ पौधा लगाया' — 'Continuing my pledge of planting a sapling every day, I planted one today in New Delhi with fellow nature lovers.' He called on citizens to join the large-scale plantation campaign on 12 August 2026, coinciding with Hariyali Amavasya, by giving a missed call to 8929629475 and uploading their own plantings to the Shiv Vriksh Mitra portal under the hashtag #OnePlantADay.

What Hariyali Amavasya means for tree planting

Hariyali Amavasya — the 'green new moon' — is a traditional festival observed particularly in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the monsoon new moon day is culturally associated with planting, greenery, and reverence for nature. Chouhan has long anchored large-scale environmental campaigns to this date, embedding conservation messaging inside a ritual that communities already observe. It is a playbook he refined across his four terms as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh between 2005 and 2023.

Shiv Vriksh Mitra: turning a pledge into a public ledger

The Shiv Vriksh Mitra portal — accessible at shivrajsinghchouhan.co.in/engage/shiv-vriksh-mitra — asks participants to upload photographic proof of their plantation, converting a private act into a publicly visible, aggregated count. The mechanism mirrors digital mobilisation models used across India's afforestation campaigns, where citizen uploads serve both as accountability records and as social proof that amplifies participation. India has run the annual Van Mahotsav afforestation week since 1950; the portal approach layers a personal, verifiable pledge on top of that older tradition.

A minister's daily habit as political signal

For Chouhan, the daily sapling ritual is also a brand statement — the '#OnePlantADay' commitment gives his environmental outreach a consistency that one-off events cannot. As Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, his portfolio sits directly upstream of land use, soil health, and rural livelihoods, all of which intersect with India's afforestation targets under the National Mission for a Green India. Whether Tuesday's New Delhi planting feeds into a formal ministry programme or remains a personal campaign, the call for a missed-call sign-up and a public upload suggests Chouhan is measuring scale — and wants the numbers to show.

The real test arrives on 12 August: how many missed calls, how many uploads, and whether the Hariyali Amavasya drive produces a verifiable count worth reporting.