Launching a scathing attack on the State government, the Goa Foundation on Wednesday accused it of showing ‘utter contempt’ for en vironmental safeguards and judicial authority by once again attempting to revive the stalled railway dou ble-tracking project through the pro tected forests of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem Na tional Park. Foundation director Claude Alva res said the government’s move to re-approach the Regional Environ ment Committee (REC) for restora tion of forest clearances — despite both the Supreme Court and the Union Environment Ministry keep ing them in abeyance — exposes a “brazen, anti-wildlife and anti-forest mindset”.
The Goa Foundation and the Amche Mollem campaign also welcomed the REC’s rejection on March 26 of the State government’s request to restore forest clearances. The South Western Railway (SWR) has been pushing a controversial and “wholly destructive proposal” to dou ble its railway line from Castle Rock to Collem through the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and the national park. The proposal had earlier been granted wildlife clear ance by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL). “After the Goa Foundation approached the Central Em powered Committee (CEC), the CEC recommended cancel lation of the wildlife clearance. This recommendation was accepted by the Supreme Court in a detailed order dated May 9, 2022. Thereafter, all forest clearances issued for the railway track in the wildlife sanctuary and national park were held in abeyance by an order of the Ministry of Envi ronment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) on May 30, 2022,” Alvares told reporters. He said that the Goa government has attempted several times, on behalf of the SWR and Railway Vikas Nigam Lim ited (RVNL), to get the abeyance order vacated. The REC’s latest rejection marks the third such refusal. “The wildlife groups and the Goa Foundation are thor oughly appalled by the anti-wildlife and anti-forest atti tude of the Goa government and its forest department. It is significant that the Karnataka forest department has taken a contrary view and refused to grant approval for the same project falling within its protected areas,” Al vares said. At its March 26 meeting, the REC deferred the State gov ernment–RVNL request to revoke the abeyance on forest clearances granted for the Collem–Kalay section (15.6077 ha). It may be recalled that in 2022, the Supreme Court struck down the wildlife clearance granted by the NBWL on the recommendation of the CEC. As a result, the Union Envi ronment Ministry, on May 30, 2022, kept the forest clear ance for the project in abeyance, leaving it in a state of sus pension. “Since then, the State government has made multiple at tempts to get this order revoked for different stretches of the Hospet–Tinaighat–Castle Rock–Collem–Vasco railway doubling project in favour of RVNL. This is the third time that the request has been made for the Collem–Kalay sec tion alone,” the veteran environmental activist said. In its meeting, the REC reiterated that the railway line cannot be broken up into separate stretches for the pur pose of obtaining clearances. It further observed that even though the Supreme Court order did not explicitly mention the Collem–Kalay section, the operative part of the judg ment must be read “in its spirit” to include this stretch, which also falls within the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanc tuary, he added.
