AFTER 3 YEARS, NTCA GETS REGIONAL HEAD... Nagpur: More than three years after the regional office of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) was inaugurated in Nagpur, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has appointed an inspector general of forests (IGF) to head it. The MoEF has also posted a conservator of forests (CF) for its regional office at Nagpur. Supreme Court had directed the Union government to set up national environment regulator and its offices in all the states by March 31 for dealing with environment impact assessment (EIA) before sanctioning any project. While the NTCA regional office operates from working plan office in Ravi Nagar, MoEFs regional office will operate from CGO complex at Seminary Hills. For 40 months, the post was kept vacant hampering and defeating purpose of opening NTCA regional office here. However, on August 28, the MoEF appointed 1984 batch IFS officer Debabrata Swain from Odisha as IGF, a post of the rank of chief conservator of forests (CCF). Swain has been asked to take over immediately. TOI on September 7, 2012, was first to report about NTCAs shocking apathy in not appointing an officer to head the regional office inaugurated on April 27, 2011, by none other than chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and then environment minister Jairam Ramesh. During the inauguration, both the leaders had said opening of NTCA office was the first step towards boosting tiger tourism in and around Nagpur, the Gateway to tiger land or Waghpur. During the inauguration, member-secretary of NTCA Rajesh Gopal had promised that an IGF would be posted in three months. Of the three NTCA offices in India, Nagpurs was the first. It was to oversee 15 tiger reserves in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. However, as there was no head, the present incumbent Ravikiran Govekar, an assistant inspector general (AIG), posted here handled more than 50% tiger reserves in the country. Of the 41 tiger reserves in India, Nagpur regional office looked after 25 spread over 10 states. This is because there is no official posted in Guwahati regional office too. Now an AIG has also been appointed in Guwahati. As the IG was not posted, AIG used to be always on tour of tigers reserves in other states. The regional office is supposed to plan, monitor, and provide guidance in the field management to tiger reserves. Earlier, NTCA had appointed wildlife vet Dr AD Kholkute as a consultant but he resigned as he was told to run the office in the absence of ministerial staff. Now that two senior officials have been posted to head both the central wildlife and territorial forest offices, things will streamline. The minor forest clearance proposals will be decided at Nagpur itself, said forest official. NTCA office is also proposed to be eventually shifted to CGO Complex.(Source: TOI, Via: SST, Representational picture).
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 11:23:16 +0000
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