New Delhi: A committee constituted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has found that Uttarakhand forest officials “went out of their way” at every level to allow illegal constructions to come up within the Corbett Tiger Reserve — India’s oldest tiger reserve.
The NGT-appointed committee, in its observations published Monday, has asserted that the widespread felling of trees and illegal construction work have led to “extensive and irreversible damage to the pristine wildlife habitat” — and that corrupt forest and government officials are squarely to blame.
Illegal constructions inside the reserve — such as administrative buildings, forest rest houses, and a residential complex for senior forest officials — came to public notice after a writ petition was filed in the Delhi High Court in 2021. Several committees have since investigated the site and the extent of construction activity inside the reserve in violation of permits and forest laws.
The joint committee’s findings come more than a month after the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) — constituted by the Supreme Court in 2021 over ‘illegal tree felling and construction activity’ within the reserve — said Uttarakhand’s former forest minister, Harak Singh Rawat, was “largely responsible for the mess”.
Rawat had laid the foundation stone for a tiger safari and sanctioned work towards it in 2020, before the project was awarded final forest clearance.
Apart from Rawat and then divisional forest officer Kishan Chand, the panel held nine forest officers responsible for allowing the work to go through, including Akhilesh Tiwari (district forest officer), Rahul (conservator of forests/director) and Jabar Singh Suhag (chief wildlife warden), among others.
“It is clear that the officers of Corbett National Park had scant respect for acts, rules, regulations and guidelines and behaved in most irresponsible manner in the extant case,” the NGT committee’s report says.
The Corbett Tiger Reserve has the highest density of tigers compared to all other tiger reserves in the country, and houses 40 threatened species, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
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Findings & recommendations
The NGT committee included three senior officials from the Union Ministry of Forest, Environment and Climate Change — Bivash Ranjan, additional director general of forests (ADGF), S.P. Yadav, ADGF (Project Tiger) and member secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, as well as C.P. Goyal, special secretary and director general of forests.
The committee was constituted after the NGT took suo motu cognisance of a story in The Hindu about the number of trees felled due to the illegal construction and tiger safari, which it said was much higher than the proposed 163 trees.
Although most of the officials involved in the case have been transferred from their posts, the NGT panel has recommended strict action against them, as well as the establishment of “objective parameters” that can act as guiding principles for habitat management.
According to the Forest Survey of India, around 6,093 trees were felled due to construction in the reserve — a number that the Uttarakhand forest department has challenged.
According to the report, the NGT panel, which visited the site on 6 January and 6 February this year, found that there was widespread evidence of tree felling and that “there are no reasons to doubt the estimates of FSI.”
The committee also found evidence of illegal watering holes, elephant-proof walls (to prevent human-animal conflict), and road constructions “which have been undertaken without any administrative and financial approval and without any budgetary provisions”.
The panel recommended that the elephant-proof walls, which it said seemed to be “constructed just for the sake of construction”, should be removed to allow for the free movement of wildlife.
Last month, the apex court’s CEC said that the illegal construction work is not just limited to one area within the reserve, but that it may be present in other areas too.
However, no construction has taken place since December 2021, according to the report.
The panel also recommended that the construction work for the tiger safari should resume under the supervision of a committee led by state government officials and experts to ensure “due diligence” is followed while implementing the layout plan.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)