PANJIM: Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said that the Goa government has no option but to notify the Mhadei Tiger Reserve by October 24, 2023.
Taking to micro-blogging site X (formerly Twitter), he said recollected that on June 28, 2011, a few days before he moved to Rural Development Ministry, he had written to then Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat to agree to have the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary declared as a Tiger Reserve.
“On July 24th 2023, the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court, in response to some petitions, directed the Goa government to declare Mhadei as a Tiger Reserve. It gave the Goa government three months to do so. The Goa government then approached the Supreme Court to nullify the order of the High Court. But on September 25th, 2023 the Supreme Court refused a stay. So now the Goa government has no option but to notify the Mhadei Tiger Reserve by October 24th, 2023,” Ramesh said.
“Of course, like in the case of the cheetah project, the PM will claim credit. But let that be. There is continuity in governance which he never acknowledges,” Ramesh said.
Ramesh, who is currently Member of Parliament and General Secretary in-charge Communications of Indian National Congress, also posted the letter which he had written to Digambar Kamat way back in 2011.
Since then, the Union Minister for Forest and Environment has been urging the Goa government to submit a proposal to declare the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a “Tiger Reserve” since “there is evidence to show that tigers in Goa are not merely transient animals but a resident pollution as well”.
An incident of a tiger’s death in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary in 2020 revived the call for notifying a Tiger Reserve in the State.
The Goa Foundation approached the Bombay High Court at Goa for notification of a tiger reserve in the State. The petition prayed the court to direct the State to set up a Tiger Reserve in Goa.
In July this year, the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court directed the Government of Goa to notify the 208 sq km Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and its surrounding areas as a Tiger Reserve, and issue a notification within three months.
The Goa government had filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court challenging the July 24, 2023, High Court order directing it to notify the Tiger Reserve within three months from the date of the order and additionally to prepare a tiger conservation plan as per the Wildlife Protection Act and submit it to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) within the same time-frame.