Gujarat wildlife board to meet on March 5 over clearance to resort near Gir National Park

This is the second time in two months that the board is meeting to discuss the resort that is planned to come up on a 165-hectare-large land on the border of the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in Gadhiya Chavand village, Dhari taluka, of Amreli district.

The private firm had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in 2009. The government had allotted some land to the private firm and the latter purchased some parcels from private owners. However, the project was stuck owing to wildlife clearances. SBWL had taken up the issue at its 20th meeting in December last year but had kept it pending for further deliberations.

The firm had applied for wildlife clearance but the Board had rejected it, stating the proposed project site falls within one-kilometre of the boundary of the Gir sanctuary, the world’s only habitat of Gir lions, and thus is in violation of the existing policy of the state government. Subsequently, the private firm had moved the Gujarat High Court, contending its project site is 1.012 km away from the GS-15 coordinate, one of the 33 GPS coordinates along the boundary of Gir, as mentioned in maps of the 2016 draft notification of the eco-sensitive zone.

The Gujarat forest department, however, has contended that the 33 GPS coordinates along the boundary don’t give a detailed delineation of the 626-kilometers-long boundary of Gir and has underlined that the distance between coordinate GS-14 and coordinate GS-15 is 14 kilometres.

It had submitted that the boundary of Revenue Survey No 43 of Gadhiya Chavand village, which was declared as part of Gir sanctuary in 1974, and shares the boundary with the land acquired by the private firm for the proposed resort. It has further submitted in the High Court that the project land is only 400 meters and 540 meters away from point “A” and “B”, the two nearest relevant reference points respectively of the sanctuary boundary and that measurement of distance of the project site can’t be from GS-15 only.

The High Court has noted that if the distance is measured from the aforesaid points, half of the project land will fall within the 1-km limit and that in such an event, the project may fail. “In such circumstances referred to above, we want the State Wildlife Board to look into the issue and accordingly guide the state government,” the bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Vaibhavi Nanavati had directed on November 26 last year.