Plea in Supreme Court seeks to protect Western Ghats as a whole
The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre and the Environment Ministry on a plea to quash a recommendation by High-Level Working Group treating the entire Western Ghats into patches for protection, thereby excluding around 72,000 square kilometres of area. (M Kaviya and ors versus Union of India ansors)
Notice was issued by a Bench comprising of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices Dinesh Maheswari and AS Bopanna. The plea has been filed by seven minors, four rights-based organizations and sixteen individuals from the six states where the Western Ghats are situated.
The petitioners accused the Central Government and the state Governments of the six states in which the Western Ghats is situated – Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu “to have completely failed in their duty to protect the Ghats, and have instead allowed its destruction over the years.“
Argued by Senior Advocate Raj Panjwani along with Advocate on record Shibani Ghosh, the petition states that “despite its critical importance, the Western Ghats is not protected as a contiguous range.”
According to the petition, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) set up the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) in 2010 and the High Level Working Group (HLWG) in 2012. The plea points out that the Goverment had also recommended the inclusion of various Western Ghats sites in the World Living Heritage list.
The WGEEP in its 2011 report identified an area of 1,29,037 sq. km. to be part of the Western Ghats. However, the HLWG recommended that only 59,940 sq. km. of the Western Ghats should be protected – this was 37% of the total area of the Western Ghats of 1,64,280 sq. km. identified by the HLWG.
Even in the limited 37% of the Western Ghats area that the HLWG recommended for protection, the bulk of the area falls either under Protected Area or forest land.
The plea argues that such areas are already protected under the provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 and the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980.
Substantiating its case, the plea states that after accepting the HLWG’s report ‘in principle’, till date the Central Government has only issued directions under Section 5 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 regulating certain activities first in an area of 59,940 sq. km.
The plea demands that not only should the WGEEP recommendations be implemented but that the government direction which excludes an area of 72,212 sq km of land from protection should be quashed or stayed.
The primary grievance of the petitioners is that the criteria adopted by HLWG for demarcation of Western Ghats area and Ecologically Sensitive Areas would lead to breaking up the Western Ghats into a series of patches.
