Karnataka cabinet rejects Kasturirangan panel’s recommendations for protecting Western Ghats

Across parties, MLAs and MPs from constituencies in Karnataka’s Western Ghat region are opposed to the implementation of the report.

Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah had said earlier this year: “Our government has decided that the Kasturirangan report will not be beneficial to people. Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre is of the view that we should discuss it again before rejecting the report.”

In its official response to the report, the Congress government in Karnataka, in 2015, had taken the stand that ecotourism should be allowed in protected areas and that existing power plants should be allowed to expand.

The government accepted a ban on mining but was in favour of stone quarrying and sand mining on the grounds of local development. “Too many restrictions in the absence of larger public appreciation and support, will defeat the very purpose of conserving ecology and environment in the Western Ghats,” the state claimed.

A state-level expert committee conducted meetings in the Western Ghats districts and said in a report in 2015 that only 153 (as opposed to 1,553 villages) in Karnataka should be declared ecologically sensitive areas of the Western Ghats.

When the BJP government at the Centre proposed the notification of Western Ghats as an eco-sensitive area in 2022, the then Karnataka BJP chief minister Basavaraj Bommai took a delegation of MLAs and MPs from the Western Ghats to meet environment minister Bhupendra Chaubey to dissuade him.

Recently, the Karnataka environment and forest minister in the Congress government, Eshwar Khandre drew flak for claiming that the state would adopt the Kasturirangan report’s recommendations.

“I have not said that the government is bound to implement the Kasturirangan committee report on the preservation of the Western Ghats,” Khandre said.

“I have said that the central government has formed a review committee headed by Director General of Forests, Sanjay Kumar. This committee will submit its report. I have said that the government will take a decision on the report after talking to all the stakeholders of the Western Ghats,” Khandre said.

“The Kasturirangan report is 10 years old. There is even a counter argument as to whether it is still relevant. If Western Ghats are declared as an ecologically sensitive area, there is a fear that the livelihood of people living in the Ghats will be affected,” he said last year.