Environment ministry seeks to bypass SC on wildlife projects

The environment ministry has decided to independently allow the cutting of trees for development projects in eco-sensitive zones around 650 wildlife areas “without waiting” for the approval of the Supreme Court and the government’s expert wildlife committee, a decision that signals a confrontation with the judiciary.

Updated on: Aug 18, 2015, 02:47:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has decided to independently allow the cutting of trees for development projects in eco-sensitive zones around 650 wildlife areas “without waiting” for the approval of the Supreme Court and the government’s expert wildlife committee, a decision that signals a confrontation with the judiciary.

The government will seek the court and committee’s approval only for projects proposed inside protected areas. Such projects account for less than 10% of the proposals considered by the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) for diversion of forestland for all types of mining, infrastructure and defence projects.

In a new set of rules stipulated for examining projects involving wildlife, the ministry said it will decide on diversion of forestland for projects around protected areas without waiting for approval of the Supreme Court or the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).

“The central government will examine the recommendations of the FAC in respect to forestland located outside protected areas and will take decisions on the merit of each case without waiting for approval of standing committee of NBWL and the Supreme Court,” said the order issued by HC Chaudhary on the direction of environment minister Prakash Javadekar.

Chaudhary was not available for comment despite repeated attempts.

The Supreme Court in 2005 had made seeking its approval and examination of the projects by the standing committee of the NBWL a mandatory condition before the ministry decided on projects in and around wildlife areas.

This, in the government’s view, led to delays in execution of crucial infrastructure projects in and around wildlife areas. The ministry, on the directions of the prime minister’s office, filed an application in the Supreme Court in April, seeking relaxation of the 2005 order on the ground that project approval was an executive power and not one of the judiciary.

Exercising its executive power, the ministry issued a guideline for state governments on diversion of forestland that takes away the court’s powers partially.

Environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta said the guideline violated the Wildlife Protection Act which provides for National Board for Wildlife approval of all projects in and around protected areas.

The wildlife law says areas linking a protected area or tiger reserve with another protected area or tiger reserve should not be diverted for ecologically unsustainable uses except in public interest, with approval of the National Board on the advice of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

“No statutory provision can be curtailed by a government circular or an office memorandum. The power to amend the law is only vested with Parliament and not the ministry,” Dutta said, adding that the guideline was also in violation of the Supreme Court order in the Goa Foundation case. The foundation had claimed allowing projects in and around wildlife areas without proper appraisal violated the Wildlife Protection Act. The guideline does not mention the Wildlife Protection Act under which the SC had issued its direction and refers only to the Forest Conservation (FC) Act that allows diversion of forestland projects.

It provides a new set of procedure for consideration of projects by the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), a statutory body set up under the FC Act, in and around wildlife parks and sanctuaries.

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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