‘Religion’, ‘animal thirst’ cited as reasons to approve infra projects in wildlife areas

About 50 projects in and around India’s critical tiger and wildlife habitats have been approved nod at a meeting of the standing committee of the national board for wildlife.

Updated on: Feb 11, 2017, 09:50:09 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan

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Religion, quenching animal thirst and public interests are some of the reasons cited by an environment ministry panel to recommend big ticket projects in and around India’s critical tiger and wildlife habitats.

About 50 projects in and around India’s critical tiger and wildlife habitats have been approved nod at a meeting of the standing committee of the national board for wildlife. (HT file)

About 50 such projects got nod at a meeting of the standing committee of the national board for wildlife (SC-NBWL) headed by environment minister Anil Madhav Dave, the minutes of the meeting released this week revealed.

Religion was invoked to allow widening of a road through Nagarjunasagar Srisailam Tiger Reserve in Andhra Pradesh. The project is dubbed “public utility for the devotees” as it would provide better connectivity between Atmakur to Kolanu Bharathi Temple.

The minutes of the meeting held on January 3 said the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) recommended the project after due feasibility assessment carried out by a team of officers and scientists.

While allowing a check dam at Balaram Ambji sanctuary in Gujarat, the committee maintained that the water stored there will help wildlife to quench their thirst during dry season.

A large area of the sanctuary will be utilised for building the dam.

The committee recommended an approach canal through Shoolpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Narmada district of Gujarat, stating it will provide irrigation facilities to farmers of 10 villages.

The panel also allowed conversion of meter gauge line to broad gauge through Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra as Indian Railways claimed that an alternate route would result in “felling of thousand of trees”.

The minutes showed that the railway’s claim has not been vetted by any expert agency and the concerns of the NTCA on impact of the faster train line through the reserve on tiger dispersal, habitat connectivity for genetic exchange and protection failed to find much consideration.

Minister Dave overruled the concerns and allowed the project saying the mitigation measures by the NTCA would be enforced through a memorandum of understanding with railways.

Pushp Jain of non-government EIA Resource Centre, however, said the government has failed to provide any assessment of the habitat loss because of the alternate route that could have benefitted people in districts of Akola, Amravati and Bhandara.

Conservationists say the conversion will also result in cutting of the trees on 161 hectares of the forestland but the convoluted minutes fail to provide details.

Ravi Singh, chief executive officer of World Wide Fund (WWF) for nature said the standing committee was within its rights to take these decisions as they did not violate any law. “One has to consider the pressure of devotees or demand for development by locals. But, it does not mean that the government should not improve habitat for wildlife,” he told HT.

The NDA government has modified rules to expedite approvals in and around the wildlife areas for ease of doing business especially for mining, irrigation and linear projects.

An analysis of approvals by the highest advisory body of the environment ministry by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) showed that close to 400 projects have been approved by the NDA government in two-and-a-half years as compared to 260 by the UPA government in five years.

The rejection rate fell from 11.9% to 0.01% in the same period indicating that projects in green habitats have suddenly become feasible.

The CSE had said the ministry has introduced new norms to control pollution from these projects but panel members have expressed concern over monitoring its implementation.

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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