meerut forced to close their sawmills following an order to the effect issued by the forest department a delegation representing 650 traders in the sports industry met district forest officials here on friday to plead for reopening their units as it was severely impacting the manufacturing of cricket and other wooden sports equipment that meerut is famous for throughout the worldthere are more than 250 big and small sawmills which supply wood for manufacturing cricket and other wooden sports equipment these sawmills were forced to down shutters after the up government gave directions to the forest department to immediately ban these illegal sawmills in compliance with a 2001 supreme court orderas a result both traders as well as labourers are worried as they are solely dependent on these small sawmills for production of cricket equipment the business which is dependent on small sawmills generate a turnover worth rs 200 crore annually in the form of bats stumps carom etc the wood is procured from locally grown poplar tree and its entire cutting is done here we have the stocks for a month or so but after that we are going to lose heavily in terms of finance said president of the surajkund road sports goods association anuj singhal more than 10000 workers are associated with this industrysinghal added under the previous governments there was no licence procedure that we were asked to undertake even now we are willing to go by the procedure if any but we must be given some time so that we do not suffer losses you cannot just stop a mechanism by labelling it illegal without generating an alternative for thatforest officials are sympathc but say they can do littleit may be recalled that on october 30 2002 supreme court had directed no state or union territory shall permit any unlicensed sawmills veneer and plywood industry to operate and they are directed to close all such unlicensed unit forthwith no state government or union territory will permit the opening of any sawmills veneer or plywood industry without prior permission of the central empowered committeelater in an order dated october 5 2015 the apex court said the ministry of environment forest and climatic change is authorized to issue appropriate guidelines in conformation with the orders and directions issued by this court relating to assessment of timber availability for woodbased industries and grant of licence to the sameon november 11 2016 central government through the extraordinary gazette of india adopted a resolution in compliance with the directions contained in the order for issuing licence to the sawmillsbut as a rule this gazette requires to be ratified by the state government which is yet to be doneaccording to dfo aditi sharma till the ratification is not done by the state government most of the sawmills are illegal after ratification the process of licensing can be adopted as per government guidelines we have full sympathy with the representatives of the sports industry but we have to implement the government orders