Forest killed, land sharks get sanctuary in Haryana

HOODA-NIT? This canal is allegedly being built inside the Saraswati Sanctuary at the behest of Haryana CM.

    

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Keywords: Wildlife Sanctuary, Haryana

New Delhi: The world maybe debating climate change and global warming but Haryana government has other concerns.

It has quietly denotified 4,400 hectares of Saraswati sanctuary to make way for Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda's pet project - the Hansi Butana Canal.

A stretch of sanctuary been wiped off all government records and given way to the Rs 250 crore flagship project.

Five acres of the sanctuary had been denotified earlier. Soon, land-roving machines, labour camps, sand piles came up on the site, trees were cut and finally, in October 2007, Haryana denotified the entire sanctuary.

“What they have done is a violation of the Supreme Court order,” says wildlife lawyer Ritwick Dutta.

CNN-IBN Investigation found top officers in the Haryana government were party to the sanctuary's destruction.

Chief Wildlife Warden Jakati allegedly gave written permission for sand trucks to ply through the sanctuary, in violation of the Wildlife Protection Act. Hooda’s right hand man, Tayal, allegedly conducted a series of meetings to ensure work on the canal was not stalled.

In a letter available exclusively to CNN-IBN, PCCF Haryana JL Srivastava - now promoted to DG (Forests) - reprimands a Divisional Forest Officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi for stopping trucks purportedly carrying construction material from entering the sanctuary.

Chaturvedi has been suspended.

Several question remain unanswered: Is it possible the canal was just an excuse for denotification of the sanctuary? To allow timber worth Rs 50 crore and 10,000 acres of prime land to be eaten up by Haryana's real estate boom?