Kottayam: The state government has formed five-member panchayat-level committees to rework the ecologically sensitive areas defined by the Kasturirangan report.
“The committees will have to complete their spot verification before January 10, 2014 and submit their reports by January 13,” culture minister K.C. Joseph said while announcing the decision here on Saturday.
The committees, headed by the panchayat president, will have as its members the village officer, agriculture officer and forest officer of the area concerned.
“The activities of the committees will be coordinated at the district-level by the deputy collector,” Joseph said. The move to form local committees comes in the wake of the Ministry of Environment and Forest decision to grant state governments the right to suggest modifications to boundaries of Ecologically Sensitive Areas on the basis of a “physical verification”.
“The committee members will physically verify all the places and exempt cultural landscapes like estates, farmland, human habitations and other specified areas from the ambit of the ESA,” the minister said.
There were widespread complaints that the Kasturirangan panel had marked plantations and even human settlements as natural landscape and erroneously branded these areas ecologically sensitive.
It was felt that aerial satellite mapping adopted by the panel had led to such errors The three-member expert committee formed to elicit the opinion of the affected people has completed its task and will submit its report before the end of the year.
