The Supreme Court on Wednesday told authorities in Rajasthan that there cannot be any mining activity within 1-km radius of critical tiger habitats. A bench of Justices B R Gavai, S V N Bhatti and Sandeep Mehta pointed out that on April 26, 2023, the court, in a judgment, had said that mining within 1-km from the boundary of a national park or a wildlife sanctuary shall not be permissible. It added, “as such the prohibition… will be automatically applicable even to the critical tiger reserves”. “At the cost of repetition, the protected areas would not only mean national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, but also critical tiger habitats, i.e. tiger reserves. In that view of the matter, we find that continuation of any mining activities within a radius of 1 km from the boundaries of the critical tiger reserves would be in contempt of our orders dated April 26, 2023”. The bench was hearing an application which said that the demarcation of the protected areas in and around the Sariska wildlife sanctuary was such that the boundaries of the critical tiger habitat extends till the outer boundary of the buffer zone, meaning there is virtually no buffer zone.
