The Wire Staff 
Hyderabad: A fresh draft by the Union environment ministry notifying a ‘Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area’ where developmental activities would be regulated if it were to come into effect includes one of the villages damaged in the Wayanad landslides.
Thirteen villages in Kerala’s Wayanad district, including Noolpuzha that was affected by a series of deadly landslides on Tuesday (July 30), have been notified as part of the ecologically sensitive area (ESA) in the draft dated July 31.
A total of 56,825 square kilometres of land across six states – Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – are to make up the Western Ghats ESA, with 9,993 of those square kilometres located in Kerala.
Among the regulations notified for the ESA are a ban on mining, quarrying, new or expanded thermal power plants, and new or expanded industries under a certain category. The draft also contains regulation for the construction of new buildings and hydropower projects.
But this is the sixth such draft notification of the Western Ghats ESA in over ten years – previous drafts never became law as all six states involved have raised objections to them, The Hindu reported.
It added that while such a draft would normally become law after a fixed period of time meant to collect public comments, the Union government has refrained from setting the Western Ghats ESA drafts in stone because of their contested nature.
A senior official told the newspaper that it was just a coincidence that the latest draft was issued a day after the Wayanad landslides.
“The fifth version of the draft was issued in July 2022. While open for comments for 60 days, a draft is valid for 725 days and this ended on on [July 31]. So we had to reissue it. There’s no change in the content. The tragedy in Wayanad is just coincidental,” he was quoted as saying.
Heavy rain triggered a series of landslides in Wayanad district in the early hours of Tuesday, causing the devastation of places surrounding the Mundakkai area.
ANI cited Kerala’s health minister as saying 308 people died in the incident.
Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, under whose leadership a committee said in 2011 that the areas affected by this week’s landslides were highly sensitive, told The Hindu that the landslides were ‘man-made’.
“No development should have taken place in these highly sensitive areas,” Gadgil was quoted as saying.
The ‘Gadgil Report’ graded areas across the entire Western Ghats into three different zones, with each zone having different regimes of regulatory protections based on how ecologically sensitive the zone was.
But state governments disagreed with this report, following which another committee revised the area of the ESA.
That committee, headed by space scientist K. Kasturirangan, identified a little less than 60,000 square kilometres of area in the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive.