MoEF confirms Mani’s ‘fears’

Thiruvananthapuram: The Ministry of Environment and Forests seems to have confirmed Finance Minister K.M. Mani’s fears about the Kasturirangan report.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said senior MoEF officials had conceded that the high-level working group had erroneously branded even some rubber plantations as ecologically sensitive area. The Chief Minister also said that he had requested Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony to take up the issue with Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jayanti Natarajan.

“The officials admitted that there were loopholes in the report of the HLWG led by Kasturirangan,” the Chief Minister said while inaugurating a seminar on Kasturirangan report organised jointly by the Forest Department and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists here on Monday.

The concern was first raised by K.M. Mani in a letter to  Ms Jayanti Natarajan. Chandy said that the errors were pointed out during the discussions he had with MoEF officials recently. The officials  told us that the mistakes would be rectified,” he said.

“The report says that only those areas with less than 100 people per square km have been declared as ESA. The reality is most of these areas have a density of 300-500 people per sq km,” Chandy said.