Why India’s Forest Rights Act Is the Most Viable Forest Conservation Law

science.wire.in | May 11, 2021

The Union environment ministry called for expressions of interest from consultancies on April 8, 2021, to prepare a draft comprehensive amendment to the Indian Forest Act 1927. Will fortress conservation make a legal comeback? And will Parliament collaborate in this disaster?

For too long forest conservation has been plagued by ‘fortress conservation‘. Based on the myth that humans can be separated from the natural world, forest enclaves are created, enclosed and policed by guards, gatekeepers and administrators. Increasingly militarised, these are fast emerging as killing fields. Forests, wildlife and forest dwellers faced the brunt of this ill-conceived pernicious conservation approach. India’s Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA) is perhaps the first law in the world to outright discard state-led fortress conservation, adopting conservation-based community forest governance instead. Conservation science affirms rights-based conservation as the future of conservation.

Fortress conservation is traced to the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1864 for ‘public use, resort and recreation’. It was carved out of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains by waging a war against its indigenous people, the Ah-wah-ne-chee, and forcing them out. The first Protected Area (PA) in the world, the Yellowstone National Park, was set up in 1872, a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The first legal conservation framework is the US Wilderness Act of 1964 which recognised the value of preserving “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The fact however is that there is hardly any part of Earth that is truly pristine and wild where human beings have not set foot and manipulated to meet their needs.

Protected areas

Of the 510.07 million sq. km surface area of the earth, 70.8% is ocean and the rest land. Currently [15.4% (20,749,121 sq km) of land and 7.6% (27,718,127 sq km) of oceans are under the PA regime through 257,889 designated PAs as on February 2021. About 363 million people inhabit these PAs. Tragically, 10.8 to 173 million people are estimated to have been displaced to make way for these PAs. Mark Dowie, the renowned investigative historian, says that “the only thing that has displaced more people around the world than war is wildlife conservation.” And 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion people live in important biodiversity conservation areas.

According to the UN, 75% land surface has been altered and 66% ocean impacted. Some governments, powerful global conservation agencies and scientists argue that 30% of Earth should be under formal ‘protection and conservation’ by 2030 increasing to 50% by 2050.

Globally, forests cover 31% land area of 40.6 million sq. km accessed by about 1.5 billion people of whom 60 million are indigenous peoples or tribals. Three-fourths of these forests are government owned. About half the forest area is relatively intact. About 4.2 million sq. km of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses since 1990. Between 2015 and 2020, deforestation was 0.1 million sq. km per year down from 0.16 million sq km in the 1990s. 18% of the world’s forest area or more than 7 million sq km fall within legally established PAs.

Tryst with fortress conservation

India, with 2.4% of the world’s land area, accounts for 7-8% of all recorded species. Forests, simply lands notified as forests by law, increased steadily from 18.19% of the land area in 1949-50 to 23.34% (767,400 sq km) in 2019. This is 1.78% of total global forests. The government aims to convert 33% of land into forests.

The Indian Forest Act 1927 provides for declaration of Reserved Forest (all rights are banned unless granted), Protected Forest (rights permitted unless banned) and Village Forest (Reserved Forest assigned to villages), and regulates transit of forest produces and prescribes duty leviable on them. It defines what constitutes forest offences, prohibited acts and prescribes penalties for their violation.

There are 4,526 forest villages (inside the forests) and many more that are undemarcated or unsurveyed. 100 million to as much as 400 million people access these forests. About Rs 20,000 crore per year is earned from non-timber forest products and absorbs 50% of the employment in forestry sector. The State of Forest Report 2019 tells us that 13 out of 28 States have 33% or more land area as forest lands. These include all the eight states in the northeast (Goa, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha being the other states) where about half of the land is forested. Over 55% of these forests are not notified as forests, nor administered by the Forest Department. Local communities govern them. They are categorised as unclassed forests. Of the top 5 States with forests, 4 are tribal majority states. The forest area in the north-east has, more or less, remained the same and dense forests have generally increased in most of these states. There are more forests in tribal dominated regions where forest department is not there or are present minimally. That’s at least 110 out of 640 districts in the country. This stark reality should have been built upon assiduously as the basis for our approach to conservation. But it wasn’t.

Fortifying the fortresses

Some 171,921 sq km (5.03% of the total land area or 24.27% of the forests) are under the PA regime of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. It carves out National Parks with no rights, Wildlife Sanctuaries with restricted rights, Conservation Reserves in uninhabited government land but accessed by people and Community Reserves which include private land. The Act prohibits hunting of endangered species, lays down restrictions on hunting many animal species and list out offences that attract penalties as though conservation is merely a law and order issue. Yes. this conferred immense power to the forest bureaucracy to do what they will.

Currently this PA regime consists of 104 national parks covering 43,716 sq km (25.43% of PAs), 566 wildlife sanctuaries covering 122,420 sq km (71.21% of PAs), 97 Conservation reserves covering 4,483 sq km and 214 Community reserves covering 1,392 sq km. Marine PAs consisting of 10 National Parks, 115 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 4 Conservation Reserves and 1 Community Reserve cover 8,716.98 sq km. Of them, 6 National Parks, 95 Wildlife Sanctuaries and 4 conservation reserves covering 1,864.84 sq are in the island region and the rest in the Peninsular India. In addition, Tiger Reserves, an administrative category until 2006, were carved out of these National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries consisting of critical tiger habitat (CTH) or core area and buffer area. Provision was made to relocate the inhabitants from CTHs under Project Tiger which is still in operation, with a Rs.10 lakh relocation package which has been increased to Rs 15 lakh in April this year. There is no clear data available on number of people displaced from these PAs. However, 1 to 6 lakh people are estimated to have been displaced. Officially as on 12 July 2019, there were 57,386 families in 50 tiger reserves of which 18,493 families (33.23%) in 215 villages have been relocated from the CTH or core area. There are still 41,086 people in 496 villages. That these have been carried out in gross violation of the laws is another matter.

The forests and its PAs, including the much hyped Tiger Reserves, are denotified and diverted for all kinds of non-forestry projects including highly polluting extractive industries, and now for huge tree plantations to replace forests. Ironically, the State and Central governments are required to do all these under the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 overseen by the Supreme Court constituted Central Empowered Committee. These too are fortresses of a different kind: no entry for forests, wildlife and forest dwellers. The lives of millions of forest dwellers do not figure any way in these blueprints for nation’s glory.

Since 1947, over 6.2 million ha have been diverted for non-forestry purposes. The government charges Rs 4 lakh to Rs 10.43 lakh per ha of forest land diverted as Net Present Value (set in 2008) which was recommended to be revised to Rs 5.65 lakh to Rs 55.55 lakh per ha in 2014 but not revised. The government earned Rs 74,825 crore from the user agencies, of which Rs 65,378 crore was disbursed to states by 2019 as a compensatory afforestation fund.

Fortress breached

The first breach in fortress conservation occurred when the Wildlife (Protection) Act itself was amended in 2006 making Tiger Reserves, the most zealously guarded part of the PA, a statutory category, until then only an administrative category. Such an amendment was deemed urgent to stem the tide of vanishing tigers. This was when the draft Forest Rights Bill was being debated heatedly. The critical wildlife habitat (CWH) provision in the Bill was grafted almost completely into this amendment as CTH. These are scientifically identified community confirmed areas facing irreversible damage due to the presence and activities of forest dwellers that threaten the existence of tigers. Community rights are to be recognised, livelihood affirmed, coexistence with wildlife promoted and, if not possible, only then secure livelihood based relocation and resettlement on mutually agreed terms with gram sabha consent. CTHs are to be kept ‘inviolate’, meaning not violated or harmed. The buffer area is to be identified scientifically with the gram sabha consent. Human-wildlife coexistence is to be promoted, livelihood, developmental, social and cultural rights of the local people recognised.

50 Tiger Reserves have been carved out of these National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries covering 71,027.10 sq km. Of this, 40,340.12 sq km is CTHs or Core Area and 30,686.98 sq km is the Buffer Area.

The second and final breach, the enactment of FRA, swept aside fortress conservation outright. Enacted four months later, and operationalising in 2008, FRA applied to ‘land of any description falling within any forest area’. It includes unclassed forests, undemarcated forests, existing or deemed forests, protected forests, Sanctuaries, National Parks and Tiger Reserves including ‘wastelands’. FRA recognised all conceivable traditional rights, whether listed in the law or not, except hunting. The demarcation of forest areas on the basis of rights, from no rights to graded rights have all been swept away. Conservation agenda was made central, all pervasive and expansive covering all forests and beyond. Forest governance was entrusted to all habitations that have any rights to the forests, literally lakhs of habitations with millions of people.

So what has changed?

The first big blow was when the Environment Ministry had to issue an order in 2009 making FRA implementation and gram sabha consent for diversion preconditions for admissibility of the forest diversion proposals. The Rules to the Forest (Conservation) Act were subsequently amended in 2014 and 2016 substituting these with District Collector’s certificate instead, certifying that these have been done, and that too only after in-principle first stage clearance by the Environment Ministry. The tribal ministry meekly protested that this would make the diversion a fait accompli. Making a mockery of forest laws is nothing new for the government to facilitate ‘ease of doing business’.

CWHs under FRA, once notified, cannot be diverted for any non-forest purposes unlike CTHs under the Wildlife (Protection) Act. This was the second big blow to the Environment Ministry. No wonder, the Environment Ministry issued guidelines for CWH notification, under pressure from the Court, only in 2018. No CWH has been notified yet.

The purveyors of fortress conservation are fighting back against the loss of their hegemonic power to do what they want with forests, wildlife and forest dwellers. Since 2009 till 2019, 253,179 ha were diverted for non-forestry purposes while another 182,817 ha degraded forests were diverted for tree plantations to compensate the former diversion, ironically branded ‘Compensatory Afforestation’.

There are 170,379 villages, each having one or more hamlets that have forest lands as land use which are officially recorded. The Environment Ministry reckons that at least 40 million ha of forests (56% of the total forests) accessed by these forest dwellers need to be transferred to village institutions from the forest bureaucracy. By the end of 2020, only a fraction of this has been recognised and titled: 5.3 million ha, just 13.18% of the potential area and 6.9% of forests. The forest bureaucracy aggressively resists FRA implementation, especially in PAs. The constitutional validity of FRA itself is now under litigation in the Supreme Court by the proponents of fortress conservation.

Jurisdiction of gram sabhas

The third big blow, the biggest of them all, was that FRA designated the gram sabhas as the governing authority of the forests. They are to demarcate their community forest resource area (Sec.3(1)(i) of FRA): “forest land within the traditional or customary boundaries of the village or seasonal use of landscape in the case of pastoral communities”, and protect, regenerate, conserve, manage and regulate access (Sec.5(d) of FRA). This area includes the forest lands claimed under individual rights of its members which are inalienable, non-transferable but inheritable, areas claimed for community rights of any kind irrespective of whether the area falls within any PA including the CWHs if and when notified by the Environment Ministry.

Further, the gram sabhas are to protect ‘adjoining catchment area, water resources and other ecologically sensitive areas’ (Sec.5(b) of FRA). They are also to preserve their habitat ‘from any form of destructive practices affecting their cultural and natural heritage (Sec.5(c) of FRA). These may fall outside their community forest resource area. The gram sabhas are now required to prevent any activity in these areas, and outside as well, that could harm these areas. The territorial jurisdiction of the gram sabhas with regard to conservation now covers vast forest areas. They overlap with adjacent gram sabhas creating an intricate ecological web of collective responsibility. Conservation, access and use of these forests demands cooperation amongst adjacent gram sabhas rather than competition or conflict through the fullest expression of democracy.

C.R. Bijoy examines natural resource conflicts and governance issues.

In Odisha, funds meant for mining-affected communities are being diverted to urban areas

Scroll | Manish Kumar | May 09, 2021
Those living in mining areas have been seeking assistance for basic amenities for decades.

During the latest budget Session of Odisha’s Legislative Assembly, the Odisha government’s Cabinet in March approved several proposals but the one that raised eyebrows was to use the District Mineral Foundation funds, meant for the mining-affected community in the Sundergarh district, for construction of an international stadium in Rourkela town.

The proposed international stadium has been envisioned to host the Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023. This misuse of the funds is not a one-off incident, but there have been many similar trends over the years. In 2017, in the Jharsuguda district, the district administration sanctioned works related to the power supply to the Jharsuguda airport with an investment of more than Rs 20 crore squeezed from the District Mineral Foundation funds.

In another mining district of Keonjhar, the district administration in 2019-’20 sanctioned works for a handball stadium, and invested around Rs 5,00,000 for a patient facilitation centre for Cuttack-based medical college which is around 200-km away from Keonjhar.

In January 2020, the administration of the Sundergarh district bought 25 cars with the District Mineral Foundation funds for them to be used as patrolling vans by the police in Rourkela city, a non-mining affected area. Earlier, even integrated traffic management was sponsored with the funds. In the same district, the funds were also used to construct the boundary walls of the Circuit House.

The list of instances where the funds were used for works that had nothing to do with the welfare of the mining-affected communities goes on. This, experts warn, is worrisome because this comes at a time when the state’s own people living in the mining-affected areas are crying for attention and seeking help for basic amenities in their areas after living in poor and vulnerable conditions for decades.

This is important because according to the Union Coal and Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi, Odisha has seen the highest collection of Rs 11,984 crore as District Mineral Foundation collections from the miners operating in the state since the inception of funds in 2015.

The Odisha government recently told the state Assembly that the District Mineral Foundation collections in the state are rising in the state. While it was Rs. 395.44 crore in 2015-2019, in 2019-’20 the total annual collections stood at Rs 3,079.20 crore.

Though Odisha has a significant amount of the funds what is probably lacking is the provision of transparency related to their use. For instance, Rule 16 of the Odisha DMF Rules talks about sharing the annual report of the District Mineral Foundation trust on its website but hardly any annual reports have been uploaded online for several years.

Odisha’s DMF Rules mandates the usage of 60% of the funds in priority areas while 40% of them could be used in non-priority areas. The non-priority areas included investments in physical infrastructure, irrigation, energy and watershed development, afforestation and others.

Queries sent to PK Jena, who is the Odisha government’s secretary for the planning and convergence department, regarding the diversion of DMF funds for other purposes remained unanswered.

Pranav Sachdeva, a lawyer with the Supreme Court who has handled many mining cases in the apex court emphasised that Odisha and many states have attempted to dilute the very concept of the funds by diverting it to areas other than the mining-affected areas.

“As mining firms grow, the local community impacted by mining does not get any benefit from the money collected … in fact the local environment is impacted too,” he said. “But the governments often diverts these important resources away from the vulnerable community. They try to use the funds for works where ideally budgetary allocations should have been used. These funds were planned for the upliftment of the affected community for their health, education, livelihood and others and many portions land in urban areas.”

Pollution mess
According to the 2011 Census, about 1.62 million people (50 percent) in the Sundergarh district belong to Scheduled Tribes and many live in rural areas. This area is adjacent to the Chhattisgarh border and known for coal mining and other minerals for decades. But what is consistently ignored is the plight of the communities impacted by mining.

For instance, Naresh Meher, a resident of Ratanpur village in Gopalpur panchayat in Sundergarh district, said that people in his village are living in pathetic conditions due to mining taking place about 10-km away. He said that the levels of air pollution, water pollution and sound pollution have taken a huge toll on his village.

“Around 3,000 trucks cross our village every day,” said Meher, who himself is a tuberculosis patient. “Thick levels of dust often engulf our standing crops while polluted water is discharged from the handpumps. Several of the citizens here live with skin diseases, cancer and other diseases triggered by mining activities.”

But this is not the end of their poor fate as his village is now listed to be taken away for mining.

Social activist Suru Mishra from Sundergarh said that in the Hemgiri block in the district, a stretch of 25 km of road connects the mining centres of Sundergarh with Chhattisgarh and passes through several villages but even then the roads are in extremely bad shape.

“You cannot walk on that road,” Mishra told Mongabay-India. “Only trucks and heavy vehicles run on that road. There are very big potholes and the whole stretch gets waterlogged making it very difficult for the local communities to commute or for kids to use that to go to schools.”

Both, Meher and Mishra, said that these areas and many other mining-affected areas need government attention to improve their standards of lives. They also said that the Hemgiri Community Health Centre is still deprived of a digital X-ray facility and ultrasound facility and other medical facilities but the government has spent several portions of the DMF funds in boosting the District Headquarter Hospital, which is in an urban area.

The provision of District Mineral Foundation funds – to be collected from miners – were introduced in January 2015 by the government of India through an amendment in the country’s mining laws for all districts affected by mining-related operations.

In the Talcher region of the Angul district, the villagers living in areas close to the coal mining and coal washery units are left to suffer from the discharge of untreated water directly into the farmlands of the village. Similarly, in the Bansapal and Joda blocks of the Keonjhar district, the villagers are facing the crisis of polluted groundwater, a result of mining activities. This has also forced many women to walk for miles every day to fetch drinking water.

Funds diverted
Experts working on the issue of mining in Odisha and other states claim that the funds are now easily diverted for other priority areas and urban areas despite it being illegal and mining-affected communities crying for help.

Sankar Prasad Pani, a lawyer with the National Green Tribunal said, “In districts like Keonjhar, the salaries of doctors are now being paid through the funds which should ideally be coming from the state’s budgetary allocations.”

“Collectors find the funds sometimes hard to dispense and thus divert it for numerous urban-centric works,” he said. “But they are not annual budget funds, they can be accumulated and do not lapse. They can be used when needed. The need is to make priority-based plans to aid the mining-affected people.”

Ramesh Agarwal, a leading Indian environmentalist based in Raigarh in Chhattisgarh said, “The rules of funds have been framed in such a way that the district collector gets the power to sanction the funds with the approval of the local District Mineral Foundation committee. In many states, we have seen diversion of the funds to other areas which is not going to affect the mining hit communities.”

A study conducted by the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment on the usage of the District Mineral Foundation funds in different mining districts of Odisha found that despite lower social and health indicators the allocation of the funds on the issue of livelihood and other areas had not been much, say for example in Sundergarh district.

“In Sundergarh, one of Odisha’s top mining districts, a negligible Rs 3 crore has been provided for child development out of the district’s Rs 745 crore sanctions. This is at a time when the under-five mortality rate in rural areas of the district is as high as 67, and nearly 50% of the children below this age are victims of stunted growth,” the report said.

Srestha Banerjee, Programme Head, International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology, who played a key role in producing the Centre for Science and Environment report, said the constitution of the District Mineral Foundation committee in the districts is one of the main problems.

“The District Mineral Foundation Committee in the districts have been formed in such a way that the local politicians including the parliamentarians and legislators exert more power in the decision making on the spending of the funds in their areas,” Banerjee told Mongabay-India. “The mining laws permit the administration to use part of the funds for administration works, but when the mining hit communities need attention for their upliftment and diversion of these funds to urban areas and for other similar works sounds less logical.”

She said that livelihood and income generation of the rural poor population living in the mining-affected areas need to get a priority under the District Mineral Foundation fund allocations. She also demanded that the funds should be spent based on priority areas rather than in a haphazard manner as it is happening presently in many mining districts of Odisha.

Bombay HC stays post-facto CRZ clearance for projects

Hindustan Times | Prayag Arora-Desai | May 08, 2021
The Bombay high court (HC) on Friday stayed a recent office memorandum issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), allowing the ex-post facto approval of projects that have not yet obtained coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance under the CRZ Notification, 2011

The Bombay high court (HC) on Friday stayed a recent office memorandum issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), allowing the ex-post facto approval of projects that have not yet obtained coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance under the CRZ Notification, 2011.

The stay was in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Mumbai-based environmental group, challenging the constitutional validity of MoEFCC’s direction. The matter has been listed for final hearing on June 30, before a two-judge bench comprising chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice GS Kulkarni.

The impugned office memorandum, dated February 19, and authored by joint secretary of MoEFCC’s CRZ division Sujit Kumar Bajpayee, was also stayed by the Madurai bench of the Madras HC on April 29, in response to a different petition.

MoEFCC’s office memo would have allowed projects – typically permitted as per CRZ, 2011, but did not seek requisite clearances prior to commencement –to become regularised subject to fulfilment of certain conditions.

“Bringing such projects and activities in compliance with the environmental laws at the earliest point of time is therefore essential, rather than leaving them unregulated and unchecked, which will be more damaging to the environment,” Bajpayee had written to the environment secretaries of all coastal states.

“As the project commenced construction and/or operations without a prior CRZ clearance, the respective coastal zone management authority shall assess the environmental damages caused by such an action and shall give specific recommendation in respect of activities, corresponding to the environmental or ecological damage assessed, to be taken up by the project proponent within a period of three years from the date of clearance, under compensatory conservation plan (CCP) and a community resource augmentation plan,” stated MoEFCC’s February 19 office memorandum, which has been reviewed by HT.

“This circular empowers coastal authorities/MoEFCC to regularise all kinds of CRZ violations on a day-to-day basis, making it easier for environmental violators to evade substantive law. It further encourages a “pollute and pay” principle rather than the ‘precautionary principle’. A public interest litigation is filed by Vanashakti on the ground that this circular is arbitrary, wholly unconstitutional and in direct contravention of recent Supreme Court judgments,” said Mumbai-based NGO Vanashakti, at the time of filing their PIL before HC on March 30.

Experts also pointed out while the amended CRZ (2019) notification has come into force, contingent coastal zone management plans (CZMP) as per the same have not yet been finalised. Until such a time, CRZ 2011 rules should remain in force, Vanashakti’s petition clarified, adding that neither notification allows for grant of ‘ex-post facto CRZ clearance’ which the MoEFCC’s office memorandum proposes to facilitate.

HC has also stated that if any permission has been granted or any application has been received for any such CRZ regularisation by a violator since February 2019, then such persons and industries are to be informed of the proceedings stemming from Vanashakti’s PIL.

“All such permissions and applications will be subjected to the outcome of the present PIL,” said Vanashakti’s advocate, Zaman Ali. A copy of the HC order is not yet available. The Madras HC, meanwhile, is set to take up the matter on August 25, in response to a PIL filed by R Fatima of Thoothukudi.

Vizag gas leak: A year on, villagers near the plant continue to live in fear

Hindustan Times | Srinivasa Rao Apparasu | May 08, 2021

Though the plant has since been closed following orders from the Andhra Pradesh high court, residents of Venkatapuram and four other villages surrounding the plant said the horror from the tragic incident haunt them to this day.

A year on since Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh woke up to one of its worst environmental disasters – leakage of poisonous gas from a storage tank of LG Polymers Ltd, a South Korean company on the outskirts of the city, killed 12 people while nearly 500 were hospitalised – villagers settled near the plant continue to live in a state of fear.

Though the plant has since been closed following orders from the Andhra Pradesh high court, residents of Venkatapuram and four other villages surrounding the plant said the horror from the tragic incident haunt them to this day.

On May 7 last year, poisonous Styrene gas leaked from one of the tanks at LG Polymers Ltd due to sudden rise in temperature at the bottom of the tank at around 3.30 am. The gas slowly spread over a radius of about 3 km, affecting five villages — Venkatapuram, Venkatadri Nagar, Nandamuri Nagar, Pydimamba Colony and BC & SC Colony.

Srinu Yadav, a transport worker from Venkatapuram, said the incident had created havoc in the lives of several villagers, particularly the poor and the middle class. “Many in these villages, particularly Venkatapuram, where the LG Polymers plant is located, continue to face health issues, like breathing problems, asthma, and gastrointestinal disorders,” Yadav said.
The villagers recall how thanks to the timely alert from locals, the authorities of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation and the district administration swung into action and shifted people from the affected areas with the help of police to safer areas.

The Jagan Mohan Reddy government paid ex gratia of ₹1 crore each to the families of the 12 who died in the incident, besides ₹10 lakh for persons who were kept on ventilator for a long time, ₹1 lakh each to 485 people who were hospitalised with serious complications and ₹25,000 each to 99 people who were treated as outpatients. Another 19,893 people were paid ₹25,000 each towards compensation.
“In the next one week, three others from the affected villages died but the authorities attributed their deaths to some other reasons. In the last one year, at least 15 people, including my father-in-law, died due to symptoms that surfaced after the Styrene gas leak. But no forensic studies were done to prove they were related to the gas leak tragedy,” Yadav said.

An eight-member expert committee headed by state special chief secretary (environment and forests) Neerabh Kumar Prasad, which was constituted to probe into the mishap, came up with a series of suggestions, including periodical testing of health conditions of villagers in the area so as to monitor the short-term and long-term impact of the Styrene gas on their health.
“Subsequently, a committee of health experts was appointed to regularly monitor the health of people in the affected villages, but it did not commence its work because of the Covid-19 pandemic,” K Kumara Mangalam, a local trade union leader, said.

He added that the government has washed off its hands by setting up a primary health centre in a local school, but it hardly helped. “Except for an occasional visit by a junior doctor and para-medical staff, nothing much has happened. It doesn’t have any facilities, though the authorities promised to set up a hospital in the area,” Mangalam said.

A study conducted in March this year by local environmentalists under Alluri Sitarama Raju Vignana Kendram on environment, health and safety of people in the villages surrounding LG Polymers, observed that the GVMC authorities were neither monitoring water bodies periodically nor getting an expert study on the water quality.
“Most of the households are depending on the canned water for drinking purposes and spending between ₹300- 600 per month,” said K Eswar, another resident.

An official of the GVMC, however, denied contamination of the drinking water in villages. “Scientists belonging to CSIR-National Environment Engineering Research Institute studied the water samples in and around the area and found that styrene is insoluble in water and would drain away in case of water flow. We are supplying Godavari water to local residents through pipeline,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The LG Polymers has shut its operations since the tragedy and the Korean management, with special permission from the Ministry of Shipping, shifted 13,000 tonnes of unused Styrene in two ships back to Seoul. On April 6 this year, the company got permission from the high court to move and sell leftover raw material, finished product and packaging material from the plant as it could pose danger to the public health if left unattended.
The court directed that sale process be done in the supervision of a three-member committee appointed by the state government and the company deposit the sales proceeds in an account in the name of Vizag district collector.

The villagers in the area are apprehensive that the LG Polymers might restart their operations once the cases pending in the high court and the National Green Tribunal were settled. “Unless the plant is completely shifted from the area, the fear of recurrence of such incidents will continue to haunt us,” said S Pydi Raju, a resident of Venkatapuram.

When contacted, state industries minister Mekapati Gautam Reddy said the government has not focused on LG Polymers as of now as it was busy tackling the Covid-19 situation. “We shall take appropriate decision after discussing with the industries department authorities later,” he said.

Polavaram backwaters has no impact on Telangana, AP govt. reiterates at PPA meeting

Hans News Service | May 07, 2021

The Andhra Pradesh state government has once again made it clear to the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) that the land in Telangana will not be flooded at all due to the backwater impact of the Polavaram project

The Andhra Pradesh state government has once again made it clear to the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) that the land in Telangana will not be flooded at all due to the backwater impact of the Polavaram project. It said that a joint survey has been conducted with Telangana Water Resources Department officials on the impact of the project backwater on the Kinnerasani and Murredu tributaries and details will be sent to the Central Water Commission (CWC) within 12 months. The government said that according to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Declaration-2006, Gram Sabhas should be held within 45 days of the issuance of the notification, stating that the Governments of Odisha and Chhattisgarh have not yet held Gram Sabhas in flood prone areas.

A letter was written to Union Forest and Environment Secretary Rameshwar Prasad Gupta on May 15 asking him to hold gram sabhas in those states with the regulatory authority as per EIA-2006 regulations. The government clarified that the construction work of the project is being carried out in accordance with the orders of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Polavaram Project Authority Chairman Chandrasekhar Iyer on Thursday held a wide-ranging meeting with AP, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Odisha Water Resources Department officials, CWC and Union Forest Environment Department officials on a virtual basis on issues raised by the NGT in the wake of a petition filed alleging flooding of Telangana territory due to construction of Polavaram project. AP Water Resources Secretary J Shyamala Rao, ENC C Narayanareddy, CE Sudhakarbabu, Telangana ENC Muralidhar, CWC Hydrology Department CE C Lal and Central Forest Environment Department officials were present while officials from Odisha and Chhattisgarh were absent.

Telangana ENC Muralidhar said at the meeting that the Polavaram project is being constructed with an estimated flood flow of 50 lakh cusecs, which will cause landslides in Telangana. In this backdrop, AP ENC Narayana Reddy denied that it was an apocalypse and clarified that a maximum flood of 36 lakh cusecs was recorded on August 16, 1986 in the history of Godavari river and the project was being constructed so that it could be easily released downstream even if 50 lakh cusecs was received for project safety as per CWC directives. He reminded that the CWC had conducted a backwater survey with the expectation of a flood of 36 lakh cusecs at Polavaram and was found that not a single acre in Telangana was submerged.

AP ENC further said they had conducted a survey with Telangana authorities on the impact of backwaters on the Murredu and Kinnerasani tributaries and that the details would be sent to the CWC within 12 months. The governments of Odisha and Chhattisgarh have said that the Polavaram backwaters will cause flooding in their states. AP Water Resources Secretary Shyamala Rao said that they are ready to build defensive walls to avoid that problem. Central Forest and Environment Ministry officials said they would take appropriate decision on the letter written by the AP officials to hold gram sabhas in the flood-affected areas. PPA Chairman Chandrasekhar Iyer said the project was targeted to be completed by April 2022 and rehabilitate the displaced.

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