Mangalore, May 06: The Minister of Karnataka state for Forest, Environment and Ecology, Ramanath Rai has declared that the Niddodi power plant project has been dropped. The Govt. of Karnataka will take necessary steps to stop the project from happening, he said.
The minister was speaking to the reporters at the press meet held at the Minister’s premises in the DC office building. “Considering the drawbacks and the ecological damage that will occure by the implementation of the project, the Govt. will drop the plan of the Niddodi power plant,” he said.
“We don’t have dual stand regarding the project. As a representative of the government, I would say that the project will not get implemented,” he added.
Speaking On protection of forests and stopping of wild animals from entering into human habitat, the minister said that the department has decided to dig trenches and fences using old railway tracks.
The minister also spoke about the Kasturirangan report saying that the Karnataka Govt. had forwarded the report to the Central government seeking some relaxations to make it people-friendly. The amended report would also reach the expectations of saving the environment. He informed that a booklet will be printed about the new form of the report and distributed to all gram Panchayats.
It was mentioned that, out of six states, i.e. Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Goa, Kerala had opposed the report as the area mentioned in the report has higher human population density.
“In Karnataka, the high-level committee headed by myself has met four times and had long discussion about the report. As per the report, the villages which have above 20 per cent of forest should be considered as forest, but we decided to increase it to 50 per cent. So, we decreased the total area from 20,000 square kms to 13,000 square kms, which is around 45 per cent (Kerala had sought 35 per cent exemption). There is no problem for agriculture, drinking water projects or house construction, but permission must be sought for thermal plant, quarry, sand mining,” he said.
The District-in-Charge Minister clarified that Kushalappa Gowda, who was killed in tiger attack in Pilikula Nisargadhama, 20-months ago, was not a Forest department staff. Pilikula is a society and it doesn’t come under the department.
Regarding compensation the Minister said, “The incident happened before my tenure and then the government had to give compensation within one month, so one cannot blame me. Sometimes forest department can’t give compensation from the department funds, but has to give from CM’s special funds, considering it as a special case,” he said and added that he would consider of helping the poor family.
