More than a month after the Supreme Court flagged alleged illegal felling of trees after videos of wooden logs floating in floodwaters went viral; the Himachal Pradesh Government has attributed it to sudden heavy rainfall, cloudbursts, landslides and glacier movement leading to extensive flooding.

In an affidavit filed in the top court earlier this month, Additional Chief Secretary (Forests) Kamlesh Kumar Pant said “that such incidents result in large-scale uprooting of trees which are carried downstream as driftwood and accumulate along with the riverbanks.”

The affidavit denied that the timber logs seen floating in floodwaters were from trees felled uphill in the catchment areas of the Ravi and the Beas.

Maintaining that “one cannot rule out stray and isolated cases of illegal felling

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