Mizoram says no to border fencing plan

In a rare move the tigers have emerged victorious over strategic concerns. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 1, 2012, 23:12:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a rare move the tigers have emerged victorious over strategic concerns.

Mizoram government has rejected the proposal of the Border Security Force (BSF) to fence the border and build nine border checkposts, each housing 33 personnel, on the ground that it will kill the unique bio-diverse region of the state.

The BSF had proposed to bifurcate the Dampa Tiger Reserve on India-Bangla border to check possible infiltration and cross border smuggling.

Around 500 sq km of the reserve is in India and remaining in Bangladesh.

The wild population moves freely between the two countries and the state government had been reluctant to give permission to build a three-line fencing.

The BSF brought the proposal before the standing committee of National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) to allow fencing up to 1,500 yards wide and 62 kms long inside the tiger reserve. Along with fencing permission for a patrol road and to set up 13 border check posts was also sought. It would have meant felling of 7,271 trees.

The committee asked one of its members MK Ranjitsinh and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) secretary Rajesh Gopal to conduct inspection and suggestion a remedial measure to consider important proposal in view of requirements of "national security".

The committee in its report to the government said that the patrol road and the border checkposts should be on the Bangladesh side of the fencing so that the tiger reserve remains a compact wildlife zone.

"There are no concrete or reliable reports of movement of insurgents and illegal migrants from this part of the international border" the state government told ministry.

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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