The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that it was “amazed at the audacity” of former Uttarakhand Forest Minister Harak Singh Rawat and former Divisional Forest Officer Kishan Chand for allowing illegal constructions and felling of trees in the Jim Corbett National Park, reported PTI.
The top court made the observations while hearing a petition filed by environmental activist and lawyer Gaurav Bansal, who challenged the Uttarakhand government’s proposal to build a tiger safari inside the Jim Corbett National Park.
Rawat had laid the foundation stone of the Pakhro tiger safari in December 2020, when he was the forest minister in the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led Cabinet.
Over 6,000 trees were illegally cut by the state government for the Pakhro tiger safari project against the permission of 163, a report by the Forest Survey of India had found in 2022. The report also stated that around 16.21 hectares of land was cleared by the Uttarakhand Forest Department officials for the project.
On Wednesday, a bench headed by Justice BR Gavai said that bureaucrats and politicians had thrown the public trust doctrine, or the principle that certain natural and cultural resources are preserved for public use, in the waste bin.
“In the present case, it is clear beyond doubt that the then forest minister and Mr Kishan Chand, DFO, considered them to be the law unto themselves,” the court said, reported The Indian Express. “They have, in blatant disregard of the law and for commercial purposes, indulged in the illicit felling of trees on a mass scale to construct buildings on the pretext of promotion of tourism.”
The court said that the case highlights the nexus of bureaucrat and politician which resulted in “heavy environmental damage”, the bench said.
The court also said that Rawat justified Chand’s posting to Lansdowne Division, under which the national park comes, even after the National Tiger Conservation Authority found the officer to be involved in serious irregularities, reported the newspaper.
“We are amazed at the audacity of the then Hon’ble forest minister and Chand in giving a total go-bye to the statutory provisions,” the bench said.
The court said that it will wait for the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its investigation in the case. The bench directed the central agency to submit a status report within three months on the illegal construction and felling of trees in the park.
It also appointed former Director-General of Forests and Special Secretary Chander Prakash Goyal, Sumit Sinha and another to suggest methods for the efficient management of tiger reserves, Bar and Bench reported.
On February 7, the Enforcement Directorate had conducted raids at 17 premises across Delhi, Uttarakhand and Chandigarh linked to Rawat. This was in connection with Rawat’s alleged involvement in illegal activities and financial irregularities in the Corbett Tiger Reserve when he was the forest minister.
The Enforcement Directorate alleged that Rawat sanctioned illegal construction works in the Pakhro Tiger Reserve range of the protected area, with the aim to develop a tourist attraction in Kotdwar – the Assembly constituency he represented until 2022.
After the allegations surfaced, the matter was investigated by the National Tiger Conservation Authority in October 2021 and the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in December 2021.
Officials found irregularities in the construction of Kandi Road – which cuts through tiger habitat – and rest houses in the Morghati and Pakhro forest ranges, in addition to the construction of a water body near the Pakhro forest rest house, reported The Indian Express.
In January 2022, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee held Rawat and Chand guilty of illegal construction activities for the proposed Pakhro tiger safari and other illegal projects in the Pakhro and Morghatti forest areas in 2021.
The committee found that Rawat influenced Chand’s posting to the Kalagarh Forest Division of Corbett National Park in order to facilitate non-forestry activities in Kotdwar.
No tiger safari in core area
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court also ruled that the tiger safari cannot be permitted in the core areaof the Jim Corbett National Park but can be allowed in its buffer zone, Bar and Bench reported.
In January, the Supreme Court had told the National Tiger Conservation Authority that its plan to develop a tiger safari that is similar to a zoo in the national park cannot be permitted.
The court, while referring to the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s guidelines that allowed for tiger safaris only within the buffer and fringe perimeters of reserves, had said that the approach to such planning should be “animal-centric” and not “tourism-centric”.
Uttarakhand is home to 560 tigers with 260 of them living in Jim Corbett National Park, as per the state government’s affidavit. The reserve is spread across an area of 1,288 square km. The proposed tiger safari at Pakhro was to be developed on 106 hectares.
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