Two years after giving nod to the conversion of the Akola-Khandawa railway line, passing through the heart of Maharashtra’s Melghat Tiger Reserve, from metre gauge to broad gauge, the Standing Committee of the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) has recently asked the railways to look for alternate route.
The move follows after the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) as well as the Dehradun based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in a meeting in February 2019 of the high-lavel wildlife panel headed by Union Environment Minister dr Harsh Vardhan which is responsible for framing India’s policy and strategy for wildlife conservation, opposed the proposal.
They asserted that the upgradation of the track will fragment the tiger habitat given that of the 35 km long railway lines which falls inside the Tiger Reserve and proposed to be upgraded, 18 km pass through the core area, thus having serious impact on the rich flora and fauna of the region.
The NTCA recommended that the only feasible mitigation is ‘avoidance’ of the broadening of gauge through the area of tiger reserve and options for the alternate routes/alignments bypassing the tiger reserve should be taken up by the railway authorities.
As per the minutes of the Standing Committee of the NBWL, NTCA Member Secretary Anup Nayak pointed out that “alternate alignment surveyed by the railways which bypasses the tiger reserve can facilitate greater economic development of the region by connecting the nearby 29 villages and large population living in the area.
“After discussions, the Standing Committee recommended to return the proposal to the Maharashtra Government with request to review the proposal in the light of the recommendations of the NTCA and WII,” said the minutes of the meeting. The members also noted that two applications were filed before the Central Empowered Committee against the approval of the upgradation of the track.
Spread over an area of 1,673 sq km, the Melghat Tiger Reserve, which is home to about 50 tigers is connected northwards to Satpuda forests.
In 2017, the Standing committee of the NBWL had approved the proposal subject to the mitigation measures recommended by the NTCA and WII.
However, wildlife activists had slammed the move with some of them even approaching the Supreme Court led Centrally Empowered committee (CEC) against the railway plan arguing that it should be shot down as it will endanger the tigers besides other wildlife in the region.