Polling booths in forests: NGT seeks Assam govt.’s reply
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked Assam’s Chief Secretary to provide details of ocers who let polling stations, schools, and other construction activities in a wildlife sanctuary and a reserve forest in gross violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.
In an adavit led in April, the State government said several schools, a tea garden, a 5-km road, and wells were found to have been built in the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary and the adjoining Charduar Reserve forest apart from polling stations under the Dhekiajuli, Rangapara, and Sootea Assembly constituencies.
The sanctuary – its ocial area is 220 sq. km – and the reserve forest are in northern-central Assam’s Sonitpur district. The Assembly segments are under the Sonitpur Lok Sabha constituency where elections were held in the rst phase on April 19.
Seeking a response from the State government, the NGT said in its order: “The adavit must also explain the inaction of the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) under whose very nose such ille
Schools, a tea garden, a 5-km road have also come up in the protected area.
gal activities were allowed to go on since 2017.”
The order was passed on May 2 by the NGT’s judicial member, Justice B. Amit Sthalekar and expert member Arun Kumar Verma.
It was based on an application by Dilip Nath, a member of an environment group called Aranya Suraksha Samiti, in 2023 alleging large-scale construction activities by the government and encroachers of the protected areas.
‘FIR registered’
Outlining the construction activities in its April adavit, the Assam government said the local forest authorities registered a rst information report (FIR) against the management committees of the schools built inside the protected areas.