MoEF clamps Kasturi norm

Thiruvananthapuram/Kottayam: The  central government has  decided to implement the K. Kasturirangan report on the Western Ghats and banned mining in ecologically fragile areas and restricted buildings to less than 20,000 sq ft in 123 villages mentioned in the report.

The LDF Idukki district committee has called a hartal in the district against the norms on Saturday. The livid Catholic Church has  threatened to resort to NOTA in the Lok Sabha polls. 

However, the latest guidelines issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests are not applicable to those granted permission before April 17. Chief minister Oommen Chandy said that there was  no need for  any panic from any quarters on the norms set by the MoEF.

“We have appointed a three-member committee to study the report by speaking to all the stakeholders in our state. They will be doing their job and once they submit their report, we will again approach the centre,” Chandy said in a press release  on Thursday night.

“The notification says that Kasturirangan report is not final and the notification is valid only till a new one is issued. It clearly states that any conditions which are against the people would be changed.”

Chandy said if needed, the government would take a firm stand and demand changes in the current notification. According to the directions under section 5 of the Environment (Protection) Act,

1986, the list of state-wise, district-wise and taluk-wise villages in Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) identified by the High-Level Working Group (HLWG) has been published on the MoEF website. The report says  that the HLWG has recommended a no-tolerance policy with respect to highly interventionist and environmentally damaging activities like mining or polluting industries.

The HLWG noted that approximately 60 percent of the Western Ghats region is under cultural landscape where it is human-dominated area as settlements, agriculture and plantations and the remaining 40 percent is under natural landscape.

Of the natural landscape, the biologically rich areas with some measure of contiguity are roughly 37 percent of the Western Ghats. This area is considered to be having high biological richness, low forest fragmentation, low population density and containing Protected Areas, World Heritage Sites and Tiger and Elephant corridors as an ESA.

As per Dr. Amit Love, Deputy Director, who has issued the directives under MoEF, the guidelines will come into force with immediate effect and remain in force till further orders. In case of any violation, appropriate legal action under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 will be taken.

Meanwhile,  the Syro-Malabar Church in Idukki will ask the believers to register negative votes in the coming Lok sabha elections if the government does not  issue the promised  title deeds to the people or does not refrain from implementing the Madhav Gadgil committee report, said Mar Mathew Anikuzhikattil, Bishop of Idukki diocese.

“In a democracy we have the right to express our  right. The successive governments have promised to issue  title deeds to thousands of people in these areas. Unfortunately,  this demand has been ignored," he said.

He also maintained that the implementation of the Gadgil committee report will make the life of the farmers in the district difficult. The Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports are an infringement on  the democratic rights of the people of Idukki district, said Binu Mannur, a farmer of Kudayathur village in Idukki.

If the report is implemented,  the life of the people of the district will be in jeopardy," he said. Father Sebastian Kochupurayil of the high range samrakshana samithi, which is spearheading the agitation against  the Gadgil committee report, told DC that for the people of Idukki district this is an issue of do or die.