Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Oommen Chandy said that he had received assurance from the MoEF that thickly populated Western Ghats villages that were mistakenly considered fragile would be freed of the ecologically sensitive area (ESA) status.
The Kasturirangan panel had marked 123 villages in the state as ESA. The chief minister made this announcement after a second round of discussion with MoEF officials in Delhi on Tuesday.
The chief minister pointed out two major discrepancies in the Kasturirangan Panel’s identification of ecologically sensitive areas. One, the erroneous branding of plantations as ESA. Two, the inclusion of villages with a population density of more than 100 per sq km as ESA.
The Kasturirangan panel had used remote sensing method to differentiate Western Ghats into cultural and natural landscape. Natural landscapes were branded ecologically sensitive.
