Wildlife board meeting ends in 5 min, clears all projects barring 2 NHs

Nagpur: The State Board for Wildlife (SBWL) stooped to a new low on Tuesday with its 20th meeting ending in just five minutes, clearing all the linear projects affecting protected areas (PAs), Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZs) and tiger corridors without any discussions.
“There were no discussions on detrimental proposals like the proposed Guguldoh manganese mine, and airport at Rajura tehsil, both falling in the tiger corridor of Pench-Navegaon-Nagzira and Tadoba-Kawal tiger reserves respectively,” said sources who attended the meeting.

“The agenda was cleared by forest minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, who attended via video conference from Nagpur, while SBWL chairman chief minister Eknath Shinde was away attending back-to-back meetings. When he came to attend the meeting, the entire agenda list, barring two highway projects in Chandrapur district, had been approved,” they said.
Sources said the meeting was slated for 1pm at the CMO, but since chief minister Eknath Shinde was busy attending other meetings, it was held at 2.45pm.