The long-delayed battle over Goa’s proposed Tiger Reserve has now reached the Central Empowered Com mittee (CEC) in Delhi, following a Bom bay High Court order from July 2023. The three-member committee—comprising C P Goyal, Dr J R Bhatt, and Sunil Limaye — held its first hearing on Tuesday and announced it would visit Goa in the first week of October for a field assessment.
The CEC has been asked to submit its findings to the Su preme Court within six weeks, with the matter listed “high on board” for hearing on November 12, 2025. At the hearing, the committee listened to presentations from Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Kamal Datta (IFS), Chief Wildlife Warden K Ramesh Kumar (IFS), the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Goa Foundation (represented by Director Dr Claude Alvares), and legal representatives of the Goa government. The State government opened its case with a five-page written submission. Its central argument was that the dec laration of a Tiger Reserve would require relocating over one lakh people, since the core area must remain “invio late” and free of human habitation. The State also questioned the tiger population, arguing that the NTCA had not established the presence of “resi dent” tigers, and claiming that since no cubs had been sighted, the adult tigers using the area as a corridor be tween Karnataka and Maharashtra could not be considered residents. The government further cited the 2023 decision of the State Board of Wildlife, which concluded that a Tiger Re serve in Goa would serve no significant purpose and was too small to be viable. Responding to these claims, Dr Claude Alvares rejected the argument about size, stating that Goa’s reserve would form part of a larger landscape that included protected areas in Karnataka and Maharashtra, extending up to the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve. He dismissed the claim that over one lakh people would be displaced as “extravagant and unsubstantiated.” Draw ing the CEC’s attention to the tiger reserve proposal pre pared and finalised by the Forest Department in 2018, he pointed out that the plan had already excluded all major settlements from the reserve boundary. “All claims made of vast numbers affected by the Tiger Reserve were negatived by the annexures in the tiger pro posal,” Alvares stated, urging the committee to request the government to produce the original documentation. He also highlighted the affidavit filed by the NTCA before the Supreme Court, which identified Mhadei Wildlife Sanc tuary as a tiger habitat. The NTCA had also recommended the inclusion of the other three sanctuaries after investi gating the 2020 tiger deaths.
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Alvares reminded the CEC that the Goa Forest Department’s proposal, developed be tween 2016 and 2018, had already included all four sanc tuaries and the national park—well before both the NTCA inspection and the High Court order. The Goa Foundation also criticised the lack of progress in settling the rights of people residing in protected are as, which were notified between 1978 and 2000. “Despite the passage of decades, these claims have neither been ad dressed nor resolved,” Alvares said. Following this, the CEC asked the PCCF to submit a table outlining action taken to address these rights since the initial notifications. Alvares further argued that there was now no going back on the Tiger Reserve proposal, pointing out that several statutory protections had already been put in place. These included the notification of a one-kilometre Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ) around all protected areas, and proposals to declare surrounding villages as Ecologically Sensitive Ar eas (ESA) under the Western Ghats protection regime, as recommended by the Kasturirangan Committee.
On the issue of rehabilitation, Alvares noted that the State’s claim of lacking funds was not tenable. “The 2017 minutes of the State Board of Wildlife clearly supported the Tiger Reserve as a means to strengthen conservation and access central funds, including funds for rehabilitation,” he said. “If the Tiger Reserve is not notified now, Goa’s protected areas will continue to languish without effective long-term protection,” he warned. At the end of the session, the Goa government’s counsel requested two weeks to respond to the detailed written submissions by the Goa Foundation. The CEC agreed and scheduled the next hearing for October 6, following its site visit to Goa.
