MP’s foray into core tiger areas earns rap

The environment ministry has said tourism cannot be allowed in core areas of tiger reserves, just a week after the Madhya Pradesh government allowed the same.

Updated on: Oct 25, 2010, 24:47:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has said tourism cannot be allowed in core areas of tiger reserves, just a week after the Madhya Pradesh government allowed the same.

The ministry also said the MP government was violating laws of the land and tourism can be allowed only in fringe or buffer zones.

If the ministry decides to implement the decision, flow of tourists to tiger reserves will take a hit.

The Madhya Pradesh forest department this week allowed tourist operators of around eight tiger reserves to take vehicles loaded with tourists inside the core areas for a limited time. The parks opened for tourists from October 16. MP is one of the first states in India to allow tourists inside the core areas, also described as safest homes of tigers.

The order, challenged in the MP high court by activist Ajay Dubey, got a twist when the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NCTA) said the state government has violated the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which clearly stipulated that core/critical tiger areas have to be kept inviolate.

“Core or critical habitat areas of National Parks and Sanctuaries... are required to be kept as inviolate for the purpose of tiger conservation, without affecting the rights of the Scheduled Tribes or such forest dwellers, and notified as such by the state governments for the purpose,” said SP Yadav, Deputy Director, NCTA, in a written reply to the court.

Madhya Pradesh’s decision not only violated the Act, but it was also against the Centrally-sponsored scheme for tiger areas started in 2008.

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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