Wildlife lobby seeks fresh review of Act
Some powerful wildlife NGOs and conservationists have written to the Prime Minister against the government implementing the Forest Rights Act without a fresh review.
By TNN |
NEW DELHI: In a hardening of stance, some powerful wildlife NGOs and conservationists have written to the Prime Minister against the government implementing the Forest Rights Act without a fresh review.
Wildlife NGOs and individuals who are part of the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL), which is headed by the PM, have complained that the government has not set up a committee to review the Act.
"The decision taken at the fourth meeting to have the adverse impacts of the Forest Rights Act looked into by a sub-committee (of the NBWL) was totally ignored (by the environment ministry) and no such sub-committee has been formed,"the letter says.
While the members have claimed the PM had agreed to a review, the minutes of the meeting record that a committee would be formed merely to 'suggest effective implementation' of the Act with reference to wildlife. The wildlife groups have accused the environment ministry of recording the minutes incorrectly.
The letter to the PM comes as a new line of attack against the Forest Rights Act, with several NBWL members that are signatories to the letter, having already opened other fronts against the legislation. Two of them, Bombay Natural History Society and Biswajit Mohanti, have already filed a petition against the Act in the SC.
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Mahendra Vyas, another board member who has written to the PM, sits on an apex court committee ��� the Centrally Empowered Committee ��� that will be advising the forest Bench of the apex court on this petition. Another wildlife board member Valmik Thapar, was only recently removed from the same court committee. Several others co-authoring the letter to the PM have been open critics of the Act from the beginning.Interestingly, Harish Salve, the amicus curiae to the three-member forest Bench that is to hear the petition, has publicly spoken against the Act, calling it an 'unabashed attempt to run politics over forests'.
Many of these groups and individuals had earlier successfully lobbied in order to stall the Act. Bowing to pressure from the influential lobby, the government had to put the Act on hold while it set up a new committee, with Valmik Thapar and Mahendra Vyas accommodated on it, to hasten the process of keeping the national parks and sanctuaries safe from the Act.
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