One plant a day — that is the pledge Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is turning into a public movement. On Friday, 25 September 2026, he planted a sapling at Smart City Park, Bhopal, alongside nephews, nieces, family members, and party workers as part of his ongoing daily tree-planting campaign.

Posting about the drive on X in Hindi, Chouhan wrote: 'Pratideen paudharopan ke sankalp ke kram mein aaj Bhopal sthit Smart City Park mein apne bhanje-bhanjion, bhai-bahnon aur karyakarta sathiyon ke saath paudha ropa.' ('In continuation of the resolve to plant a sapling every day, today I planted one at Smart City Park, Bhopal, with my nephews, nieces, siblings, and fellow workers.') He called on citizens to join the campaign and become a 'Vriksha Mitra' — a 'Friend of Trees' — by giving a missed call to 8929629475 or registering at his campaign website.

The 'One Plant A Day' campaign and how to join

The campaign, running under the hashtag #OnePlantADay, uses a missed-call registration model to recruit volunteers. A dedicated link — shivrajsinghchouhan.co.in/engage/plant-with-shivraj — lets supporters sign up to plant trees in their own neighbourhoods. The 'Vriksha Mitra' identity is designed to give participants a sense of belonging to a wider green movement, not just a one-off event.

The missed-call mechanism is a proven grassroots-mobilisation tool in Indian politics and civil society, allowing even feature-phone users in rural or semi-urban areas to register without data connectivity — a practical bridge between symbolic gesture and ground-level participation.

Van Mahotsav roots and India's afforestation push

India's culture of mass tree-planting has deep institutional roots. Van Mahotsav, the country's annual afforestation festival, was launched in 1950 and has since inspired generations of state-level campaigns. Political figures across parties regularly plant trees to reinforce national targets for expanding forest and tree cover under frameworks such as the National Forest Policy. Chouhan's daily rhythm takes that tradition a step further — converting a single symbolic act into a sustained, measurable personal commitment with a public accountability structure.

As a four-term former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and now a Union minister overseeing agriculture and rural development, Chouhan's environmental messaging carries both political weight and policy context: degraded land, erratic monsoons, and soil health are directly linked to tree cover, making afforestation relevant to the farming communities he serves.

If the missed-call numbers and website registrations translate into even a fraction of India's 900-million-plus phone users planting one tree each, the arithmetic becomes staggering. The campaign's real test is whether the public response matches the minister's daily resolve.