Rs 1,000 crore reallocation fund to NTCA may spark ministerial rift

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan may be pitted against tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo over her ministry’s decision to divert Rs 1,000 crore from funds for maintaining forest cover for relocation of people from tiger reserves.

Updated on: Jul 8, 2013, 24:07:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan may be pitted against tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo over her ministry’s decision to divert Rs 1,000 crore from funds for maintaining forest cover for relocation of people from tiger reserves.

Natarajan approved the proposal of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to provide money from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) to relocate people living inside tiger reserves and other protected areas.

The NTCA has sought Rs 1,000 crore from CAMPA for the relocation which had slowed down because of paucity of funds. The ministry had got R660 crore in the 11th five year plan (2007-12) for project tiger including money for relocation.

Around 1,78,000 families live inside protected areas including tiger reserves and are considered a threat to wildlife because of increasing man-animal conflict. The ministry’s latest data shows that 652 people were killed and around 17,000 injured in attacks by wild animals between 2002 and 2012. In retaliation, around 100 ferocious animals were also killed during the period.

The tribal right activists have, however, raised a pitch against the ministry’s move saying the money meant for relocation was being used to forcefully throw out people from forests without recording their rights, a must condition under the Forest Rights Act.

“Such relocation cannot take place until there are detailed guidelines for co-existence in protected areas,” said a senior tribal affairs ministry official, raising a pitch against the environment ministry’s latest move.

Government officials said Deo would be raising the issue with Natarajan on the ground that voluntary relocation of people from tiger reserves cannot take place until their rights defined under the Forest Rights Act are settled.

Moreover, the minister is also of the view that forest departments were forcing people out in violation of the mandatory provisions and terming them as voluntary relocation.

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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