State may ask HC for time to declare Mhadei tiger reserve

PANAJI: With just a week left for declaring the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and surrounding areas as a tiger reserve, the Goa government is likely to ask the Bombay high court at Goa for more time.
The state government had challenged the HC order, directing the state government to declare a tiger reserve within three months, before the Supreme Court. But the SC refused to grant a stay.
The state's stance to move the HC for more time follows legal advice on the matter from advocate general Devidas Pangam."In my opinion, I have said that an application should be filed before the high court to seek more time to declare the tiger reserve," Pangam told TOI.
On July 24, days after the state turned down a proposal to declare a tiger reserve, the high court directed the state to issue a notification within three months - a deadline that expires on October 24.
In a presentation before the Supreme Court on September 25, the state expressed its reluctance to adhere to the high court order to earmark nearly 25% of its territory as a tiger reserve. It pointed out the adverse consequences of the order for Goa, which has a geographical spread of 3,702 sqkm.
‘Govt has no option but to notify tiger reserve’
The high court had also directed the government to take all steps to prepare a tiger conservation plan within the same time period.
“This court cannot blink at the reality that often at the state level, regional, parochial, anthropomorphic, and times, even narrow political considerations would prevail over the more significant national interests involved in conserving and protecting the tiger and the tiger habitat,” stated the judgment by a division bench comprising justices Mahesh Sonak and Bharat Deshpande.
“While the state’s claim to steer clear of the Orwellian manner of treating some animals more equal than the others is appreciable, this should not be achieved by collectively reducing the level of protection for all wild animals, as the record unfortunately shows,” the court had observed.
The court also told the state and the forest department to take urgent steps to ensure that there are no encroachments in the protected forest areas like wildlife sanctuaries and national parks pending notification of the tiger reserve, and even after that.
The proposal to notify the tiger reserve in Goa dates to the UPA government in 2011.
Recalling it, Congress Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh on Sunday posted a letter, which he as then environment minister wrote, on the microblogging site X, saying he had written to the (then) CM of Goa to agree to have the Mhadei WLS declared as a tiger reserve on June 28, 2011.
Referring to the Supreme Court’s order of September 25 that refused to stay the HC order, Ramesh wrote, “So now the Goa govt has no option but to notify the Mhadei Tiger Reserve by October 24, 2023.”