Govt clearance to projects near forests raises questions

A key government panel on wildlife has approved more than 50 projects across India, including three in Madhya Pradesh, involving the diversion of wildlife habitats on the grounds that the people-centric infrastructure schemes will provide key services.

Updated on: Mar 5, 2015, 01:21:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A key government panel on wildlife has approved more than 50 projects across India, including three in Madhya Pradesh, involving the diversion of wildlife habitats on the grounds that the people-centric infrastructure schemes will provide key services.

The standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife cleared the projects in its last meeting in January as part of a new approach. The board, which is under the environment ministry, however, deferred a decision on some big power and steel expansion proposals that could have implications for protected areas.

In Madhya Pradesh, the panel cleared the diversion of 16 hectares of forestland from Son Chiraiya Sanctuary for 10 roads that will connect villages. It also cleared a power transmission line between Gwalior and Jaipur through the same sanctuary, a habitat of the endangered Great Indian Bustard.

Another approved project was a third railway line to pass through Ratapani Tiger Reserve on the Bhopal-Itrasi line in Madhya Pradesh. Committee chairman, environment minister Prakash Javadekar, invoked “national priority” in approving major railway and highway projects passing through key wildlife areas.

One such project involved the diversion of forestland from Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary for improving a National Highway in Karnataka.

“Road connectivity in the northeast was crucial for development, but at the same time, this should not compromise the environmental sanctity of the sanctuary,” Javedekar said while allowing diversion of forestland from Borail Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam for a National Highway project.

The panel allowed an aerial ropeway between Ghangari and Hemkund Sahib in Uttarakhand to boost tourism. The diversion of forestland from Abubshehar Wildlife Sanctuary in Haryana was allowed for eight projects.

Two irrigation projects in and around Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra and an 800MW power plant near Kinnerasani sanctuary in Telangana were approved.

A 2,000MW thermal power plant of Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited in Tamil Nadu, which was approved despite wildlife expert R Sukumar pointing out that the environment appraisal committee’s report did not deal with monitoring biological parameters, especially the impact on corals.

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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