Jairam vs Kamal Nath again?

In what seems to be a season for sniping ministers, Jairam Ramesh (environment) and Kamal Nath (road transport) may be headed for a second round of confrontation. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 16, 2010, 01:28:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In what seems to be a season for sniping ministers, Jairam Ramesh (environment) and Kamal Nath (road transport) may be headed for a second round of confrontation.

The reason: an Environment Ministry committee's refusal to allow seven coal mining projects in Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara district, the constituency Nath represents in Parliament. Nath was not available for comment.

Ramesh and Nath have already gone a round over the former's refusal to allow the widening of a national highway passing through Pench tiger reserve in Chhindwara, on the advice of the Supreme Court's central empowered committee.

This time, a committee constituted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority — which falls under the environment ministry — has said the seven projects shouldn't be allowed as they fall in the tiger corridor connecting Pench and Satpura reserves.

"Allowing coal mining will destroy a narrow corridor used by tigers to move from one reserve to another," a committee member said.

The state government hasn't notified the area as a tiger corridor but the committee based its recommendation on maps provided by the Wildlife Institute of India.

"During our field inspection we were told tigers frequent the corridor," the member said.

The committee was tasked with examining the impact of these projects on tiger conservation following protests by NGOs and conservationists.

The Environment Ministry's forest advisory committee is likely to examine the recommendation at its meeting this month, ministry officials said.

Nath had days ago taken on the Planning Commission, calling it an "armchair advisor" oblivious to "ground realities".

Ramesh has had his share of problems too - civil aviation minister Praful Patel accused him of being "overly obsessive" and delaying the proposed Mumbai airport while coal minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal held him responsible for delaying forest clearance for mining projects.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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