MLAs pressurise wildlife officials to rubber-stamp proposals

Hyderabad: The Telangana forest department practically being shown the door at the recent National Board For Wildlife (NBWL) meeting in New Delhi owes much to how the State Board for Wildlife (SBWL) meetings are conducted and how elected politicians are allowed into the meetings to pressurise SBWL members to rubber stamp almost every proposal that comes up for discussion, it is learnt.

According to sources well-versed with the SBWL meetings, it is not uncommon to have up to three or four MLAs attending the meetings and push the SBWL members to approve proposals that fall under their constituencies.  

“This happened recently with the proposal to de-notify part of the Mahavir Harina Vanasthali National Park for constructing a bus stand. The local MLA was there pushing for the proposal to be accepted. Despite vehement opposition by some of the SBWL members, the forest department officials attending the meeting decided to forward it to the national board, simply saying let a decision be taken by the NBWL,” a source familiar with the state board meetings told Deccan Chronicle.

The fact is that no one, other than the SBWL members, and special invitees — usually some forest department officials and some from other departments, whose duties concern the proposals under discussion — are allowed to attend these meetings. But, MLAs usually saunter in and department officials never object to their presence, sources said.

And usually, these goings on occur in the presence of the state forests minister, who chairs these meetings though the Chief Minister is the chairperson for the SBWL, sources explained.

It was learnt that irrespective of a proposal, be it for laying a new road, erecting cell phone towers in forests, or other projects, the standard approach of the forest department officials, who are members of the SBWL, is to record the objections from members in the meeting’s minutes, and forward all proposals to the NBWL, unless there are blatant violations of forest and wildlife rules.

None of the senior officials objects to any proposal, and concerning wildlife clearances, there is mostly silence as Telangana does not have a full-time Chief Wildlife Warden, a position that has been held as an additional charge over the past several years by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests.

Sources said that the absence of a full-time Chief Wildlife Warden in Telangana too had figured at the April 25 NBWL meeting with the Union minister for environment, forests, and climate change Bhupender Yadav questioning the Telangana officials about this.