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On March 11, 2026, the Delhi Government's Department of Forests and Wildlife published a tender to develop four "themed forests" inside the Central Ridge, one of the last ecologically intact reserved forests in the capital. They named them Tirthankar Van, Ritu Van, Rashi Van, and Panchvati Van, forests themed around Hindu and Jain religious figures, seasons, zodiac signs, and Hindu sacred trees. The project would cost over five crore rupees. Quite upfront in the tender document was the supply and spreading of two pesticides, lindane and chlorpyrifos, to be applied to the soil of the protected forest.
Lindane has been banned in India since 2011 except for public health emergencies. The Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee has prohibited the use of lindane as a pesticide and in timber. It is listed under the Stockholm Convention as a persistent organic pollutant requiring global elimination. Chlorpyrifos is also a persistent organophosphate linked to neurotoxicity, developmental damage in children, fish kills, and the collapse of soil ecosystems through the suppression of earthworms and decomposing organisms. Delhi’s Forest Department did not know any of this, or, if it did, it did not care. It wrote both chemicals into a legally binding government procurement document, attached quantities, specified application rates, and invited contractors to introduce a poison in a reserved forest.
This cannon be dismissed as a technicality or as plain ignorance. The forest department is tasked with protecting forest ecosystems and the environment as a whole, and yet does not seem to know much about pesticides. The document passed through whatever review mechanisms exist in the department and emerged intact, ready for bidding. Not one official paused to ask whether lindane was legal. Not one person wondered whether pumping organochlorines into the soil of a protected ecosystem might be a problem. The tender was drafted, cleared, uploaded, and opened for bids.
The science on these chemicals in tropical forest settings is unambiguous. Chlorpyrifos provides short-term benefits in pest control, lasting three to five years at best, which is wholly insufficient for protecting establishing seedlings over the long term. It disrupts soil nutrient cycling, kills non-target arthropods, and contaminates water systems through runoff. Their use in a forest ecosystem does not protect trees. It degrades the very soil biology on which those trees depend. All pesticides are indiscriminate. The target may be one, but a hundred other creatures die. Because of its toxicity, more than 40 countries have banned or severely restricted its use which includes the EU, Canada, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and UAE. Yet across India, its use if forest persists. To fight the sal borer, forest departments use it along with four or five other pesticides, hoping that they work. As we speak, Dindori in Madhya Pradesh has had an outbreak, for which a tender was released in February this year.
The target of the Delhi’s forest department were termites. But termites in a forest are not an enemy. They are actually beneficial to the forest ecosystem. Here is a summary of what termites do: termites accelerate decomposition by eating woody and non-woody plant matter. They make carbon 'bioavailable' for other creatures by stabilising soil organic matter. Their munching of woody biomass enhances the turnover of nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. They improve soil structure by increasing porosity and regulate moisture. They help moderate microclimates, supporting plant productivity and ecosystem resilience. But their services do not fall within the ledger of the forest department. It is ignorance in a hard hat.
It took a Times of India report and public outrage to force a correction. On April 18, 2026, the same day as the Times of India report and more than a month after the tender went live, Delhi’s forest department issued a corrigendum stating that the anti-termite provision involving the use of chlorpyrifos and lindane was withdrawn. It recommended the adoption of eco-friendly practices.
The broader failure here runs deeper than a single line item. The Delhi Forest Department does not want to restore the Central Ridge. It wants to convert it. The themed forests it proposes, built around zodiac signs, religious iconography, and seasonal aesthetics, are not ecological interventions. They are parks dressed in the language of conservation. The department wants to plant curated species in tidy pits, water them with treated sewage on a schedule, line the paths with kerb stones, install high-mast lighting, build toilet blocks, paint walls with acrylic exterior paint, and erect retro-reflective signage boards. It wants to build a managed amenity inside a forest that has survived precisely because it has not been managed in that way.
A forest does not need themed zones. It does not need bamboo gazebos or stainless steel railings or 240-litre wheeled waste bins. It needs to be left alone, protected from encroachment, and allowed to regenerate. The species that naturally colonise the Central Ridge, the ones that have established themselves through decades of ecological succession, are more valuable than any curated planting. Converting a reserved forest into a park of peace and contemplation is not conservation. It is the destruction of ecological complexity in the name of public relations.
For the religiously uninitiated, a Tirthankara is one who has conquered the cycle of birth and death. Would Jain munis be pleased by destroying a forest and making way for a manicured garden in their name? Jains value non-violence and avoiding injury to every creature. This project does the opposite. We can debate the etymology and intent of all other proposed themed parks along the same lines.
The decision not to use pesticides was reversed, thanks to ecologists, activists, and journalists who spoke about it, and no thanks to the department. But this victory only stops a part of what is proposed. The fundamental project continues. The government still intends to manicure one of Delhi's last wild spaces, the very lungs of a struggling-to-breathe Delhi into something selfie-genic, and ostensibly spiritually branded. Stopping this decimation of the last vestige of the northernmost forest on the Aravalli will be considerably harder.
Pranay Lal is a natural history writer who is currently working on a book on how nature shaped the subcontinent’s history