The bypassing of the State Board for Wildlife for the controversial Hubballi-Ankola line seems to have been the last straw for the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) which recommended that an advisory be issued so that this ‘tendency is curbed’. The matter of the railway line, which will claim 595.64 hectares of forest land from three elephant corridors in Uttara Kannada, had come up before the 50th meeting of the Standing Committee of NBWL on September 7. The South Western Railway, which is implementing the project, had hoped to take a ‘post facto’ approval after an NBWL clearance. “MoEF & CC shall send an advisory to State governments that they should not submit any proposal for consideration of the Standing Committee of National Board for Wildlife without the recommendations of the SBWL. The proposals received without recommendations of the SBWL will not be taken up,” the minutes state.

Source: The Hindu September 26, 2018 19:37 UTC