Four years after Supreme Court-formed panel’s nudge, Assam mum on construction in Kaziranga animal corridors

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The Supreme Court banned all forms of mining, stone quarrying, and related activities along the southern boundary of the one-horned rhino habitat to protect wildlife and vital hill catchments of Karbi Anglong district. File | Photo Credit: Ritu Raj Konwar

The Assam government seems to have ignored a Supreme Court-constituted panel’s March 2022 notice to provide a list of construction activities along the nine corridors of the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve and within 10 km of its default Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ).

On March 3, 2022, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) met with the Chief Secretary and other Assam government officials in New Delhi to discuss how the Supreme Court’s April 14, 2019, order was being implemented.

In that order, the apex court banned all forms of mining, stone quarrying, and related activities along the southern boundary of the one-horned rhino habitat to protect wildlife and vital hill catchments of Karbi Anglong district. The court also prohibited any new construction on private lands falling within the nine identified wildlife and animal corridors around the reserve.

The order followed a petition filed by Golaghat district-based environmental activist Rohit Choudhury, highlighting rampant illegal stone quarrying that threatened Kaziranga’s fragile ecology.

The activist used the Right to Information (RTI) to write to the CEC on June 14, seeking an update from the panel on what action the Assam government had taken vis-à-vis the March 2022 meeting.

Citing the “record of discussion” of that meeting, which said that the Assam Chief Secretary agreed to submit the information sought “without delay”, Mr. Choudhury underlined six of several points the CEC had specified.

These six included a list of activities in each of the nine animal corridors; photographs (before and after delineation) of such constructions; name and designation of officers who granted permissions for the construction activities along with copies of licenses/permissions given by them; action taken to stop/prevent constructions within the 10-km ESZ from the boundaries of Kaziranga National Park (KNP) along with names of officers responsible for enforcement of the provisions of the ESZ; and copy of the notification for constituting two committees for the delineation of the animal corridors linking KNP with Karbi Anglong hills and copies of the notices issued for removal/demolition of illegal constructions.

V.K. Panthari, the CEC’s Officer on Special Duty, replied to the RTI application on July 17. He said the information Mr. Choudhury sought was not available with the CEC.

Mr. Panthari said the CEC did not receive any information from the Assam government despite two reminders — one on April 4, 2022, and the other on March 5, 2026. Copies of the reminders were attached with the response.

On May 25, Mr. Choudhury filed another RTI application to the office of the Chief Secretary, seeking the same information he had sought from the CEC.