Wildlife board rejects railway line plan through Melghat reserve

NAGPUR: Greens and wildlife activists are claiming a major victory after the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) on Monday rejected the proposal of South Central Railway (SCR) to upgrade the meter gauge railway line passing through Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR) in Amravati district .

NBWL is the highest decision-making body of MoEFCC on projects involving national parks, sanctuaries and tiger reserves.

On January 31, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee (CEC) had put the ball in NBWL’s court asking it to reconsider the project. The NBWL in its 40th meeting on January 3, 2017 had earlier cleared the project subject to mitigation measures.

Confirming the development, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) member-secretary Anup Kumar Nayak told TOI, “After the CEC hearing, we recommended that the project should not be upgraded through the tiger reserve and instead realigned outside the reserve. The proposal will now be sent back to the state.”

On June 18, 2018, the stalled railway line project was given the go-ahead in a meeting between union highways minister Nitin Gadkari and railway minister Piyush Goyal at Delhi. Both said no clearances were required and that right of way (ROW) belonged to the railways.

A day after the meeting between the two ministers, the Railway Board issued a letter asking SCR to start work on the project. However, Akot-based environment lawyer Manish Jeswani and Mumbai-based Prasad Khale of Conservation Action Trust (CAT) moved CEC against the project in August 2018.

Hearing these two petitions on January 31, CEC asked MoEFCC representatives that as NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India (WII, Dehradun ) have recommended that ‘avoidance’ of the project through the tiger reserve is the best mitigation, the ministry should now again take up the matter with NBWL for reconsideration.

The state government in its reply to CEC on January 16, 2019, has already countered railways submission that it does not attract Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 under the ROW. “MoEFCC on December 5, 2017 had already clarified that since the ROW is part of the critical tiger habitat (CTH), FCA will be applicable,” said top forest officials.

Jeswani hailed CEC’s decision and the NBWL stand. “If we lose the biodiversity-rich fragile ecosystem and species like tiger from MTR, the loss will be forever,” he said.

Congress MLA from Buldhana Harshawardhan Sapkal welcomed the latest move. “I have been saying it in all forums that of the 176km Akola-Khandwa railway line, 39km passes through MTR where most of the villages have been relocated. If line is taken through alternative route it will benefit over 2.50 lakh people,” he said.

“This is a landmark decision. Many times linear projects claim ROW in a wrongful manner,” said Milind Pariwakam, wildlife biologist who works on linear infrastructure ecology and policy issues in India.