Mangaluru: The verbal fireworks of the anguished locals belonging to the Kasturirangan Horata Samiti (KHS) over the lack of information about the contents and reccomendations of the Kasturirangan report among the people of the western ghats, and their implementation plans, forced the cabinet sub-committee to order the district administration to convene a consultative meet at every Grama Panchayath and carry out a detailed verification of the 45 villages coming under the ambit of Western Ghats as per the report.
The members of the cabinet sub-committee issued these directions after listening to the demands raised by people belonging to the affected villages at the townhall at Puttur today. The cabinet sub-committee is headed by Ramanath Rai and Law minister T B Jayachandra and Urban Development Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake are members of the committee.
Though the district administration made a power point presentation to clear the confusion prevailing in the minds of the affected people over the report , a member from the KHS reprimanded the government for failing to circulate the draft of the report at the Grama Panchayath level. He alleged that officers did not spare time to visit all the stake holders and they were kept in dark.
As the infuriated member began shout, other members of the samiti, at this juncture, walked out of the meeting raising slogans against the government. The members then staged a protest demonstration outside the town hall demanding withdrawal of the report.
Following these heated moments, the district in charge minister, said the report was accepted by the central government and the state was just following the orders. He assured the audience that comprised of people from Belthangady, Kadaba, Sullya and Puttur, “We came here to seek your opinion and problems and to recommend the same to the central government.” He said all the pleas of the locals would be recorded before sending the recommendation report to the union government before April 2015.
The Grama Panchayath and Taluk Panchayath members in the meeting raised questions relating to definition of forest on the basis of the presence of trees, banning of sand and stone quarry mining, eviction of the inhabitants from their land, and the agricultural limitations prescribed for the land. In reply to this the district administration and ministers, said that there was no ban on agriculture, horticulture, plantations such as coffee and rubber. The administration further clarified that the state government has only taken a decision to regulate sand mining and stone quarrying as against a complete ban recommended in the study.
The meeting was informed that, the state government, had decided to recommend that only villages with more than 50 trees, be classifed as forest as opposed to the 20 mentioned in the study. On construction of schools, the district administration said, that according to the report, a building spread over more than 20,000 Square Meters, would not be issued a licence, but anything below that threshold, will have no obstacles to its establishment. The report, however, completely bans Red Category Industries from operating in the eco-sensitive area of the Western Ghats.
Ramanath Rai argued that people were prejudiced as they have confusion over the forest Acts and Section 5 of the environment protection Act. Since the environment department was facing an acute staff crunch, forest officials were doing the works on behalf of the environment department. The National Park norms, and other forest norms do not apply to this report, he informed the public.
The district in charge minister Ramanath Rai, and head of the cabinet sub-committee, however expressed the view, that there was still a possibility of sending a report to the union government, after leaving out 45 villages from implementation at one level of meeting. However he did not clarify how that would be done.
When affected people repeatedly demanded for local level consultative meetings and field verification to demarcate the affected villages, Law Minister T B Jayachandra ordered the district administration to conduct a meeting at Grama Panchayath level and do joint field verification by revenue and forest department within a span of 15 days.
MLAs from Puttur and Sullya, Shakuntala Shetty, Angara, deputy commissioner A B Ibrahim, CEO ZP, Tulasi Muddaneni, SP Sharanappa and others were present at the meet.
