MoEF to push for closure of units around Kaziranga

After 16 years, the environment ministry will ask the Assam government to shut down industrial units operating within the 10-km radius of the Kaziranga National Park— a natural habitat for tigers, elephants and single-horn rhinos.

Updated on: Jun 11, 2012, 02:16:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After 16 years, the environment ministry will ask the Assam government to shut down industrial units operating within the 10-km radius of the Kaziranga National Park— a natural habitat for tigers, elephants and single-horn rhinos.

In 1996, the ministry had declared the national park an eco-sensitive zone and thus it became a no-development zone for any industrial project. It was part of the ministry initiative to protect as many as 600 national parks and sanctuaries across the country.

This would have meant that Assam government should have cancelled mining and stone crushing licences. But this did not happen.

Hearing a petition filed by an RTI activist, the National Green Tribunal recently asked the ministry to close all units operating in the no-development zone around Kaziranga.

A National Tiger Conservation Authority report in 2008 found that stone crushers were blocking a key tiger and elephant corridor. It suggested stopping of all stone crushers on forest corridors linking Kaziranga to Manas wildlife sanctuary.

"Implementing the eco-sensitive zone regulations is the responsibility of state governments, not ours," a ministry official said, asking what they could do if the regulations were not implemented. "We have no powers to push state governments."

The regulations, however, require that any project in an eco-sensitive zone should be cleared by the ministry. But the Assam government overlooked it and granted approval to stone-crushing units. The same had also happened in case of approval to mining firms around Sariska Tiger reserve in Rajasthan and Panna tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh, the only tiger reserves to have lost their tiger populations.

"We will be writing to the Assam government soon," an official said. "...After going through the affidavit, filed by MoEF, wherein it has been clearly stated that 64 units are existing in the zone as on date, we have no hesitation to direct the authorities to take necessary action with regard to functioning of the aforesaid units," the NGT said.

Only 12 tea estates can function without processing units or boilers.

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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