ESZ demarcation: Map that once embarrassed Oommen Chandy to substantiate Kerala's case

Instead of the controversial satellite survey conducted by the Kerala State Remote Sensing and Environment Centre (KSREC), the LDF government has decided to submit a map prepared at least five years ago by the Forest and Wildlife Department to demonstrate to the Supreme Court the high population density of areas just around the extremities of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Kerala.

The decision was taken at the high-level meeting convened by the Chief Minister on Wednesday. "The Forest Department map has excluded all human habitations, constructions and agricultural lands from the proposed ecological sensitive zones," Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters on Wednesday. "It is this map that would be submitted before the Supreme Court and the Central Empowered Committee," he said.

This map, and not the KSREC's satellite images, would be the authentic document that Kerala would furnish.

The Chief Minister said the map would be published on the official website of the government. Further, he said these maps would be displayed in all the wards that could potentially come under the proposed ESZs.

This draft map is now devoid of survey numbers. These would be added to the map in a week, the Chief Minister said. "People will be given time to include more human habitations and other constructions in this map," he said. The time to provide such additional information has been extended to January 7.

For collecting such information, helpdesks have been set up at all affected wards. Such information has to be given in prescribed proformas that are available at these helpdesks and could also be downloaded from the government website.

According to sources, the Forest Department had first prepared such a map during the UDF tenure, when the anti-Gadgil protests were in full swing.

In fact, in its original form, the map had caused severe embarrassment to the Oommen Chandy government. Then, in 2015, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests was disappointed with the ecologically sensitive area (ESA) maps drawn up by the Oommen V Oommen Committee that had considerably reduced the extent of ESAs even from the levels fixed by the Kasturirangan Committee.

The MoEF asked Kerala to provide the maps drawn up by the Forest Department instead. Providing this map was politically suicidal for the UDF government.

While the Oommen V Oommen Committee took out agricultural land, and built-up land including towns and houses from areas declared as ESA by the High-Level Working Group headed by K Kasturirangan, the Forest Department maps show all these areas as reserve forest; Cardamom Hill Reserve too was shown as ESA. Even former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had favoured the Forest Department maps.

What's more, these maps included ecologically fragile land, encroachments and areas caught in legal disputes. Though encroachments before 1977 had been regularized, encroachments had taken place after 1977. These, too, were notified as reserve forests on the maps.

Lands caught in legal disputes as a result of the Kerala Private Forests Vesting and Assignment Act, 1971, also were notified as forests in the Forest Department map.

The Oommen Chandy government then took a political decision to drastically revise the Forest Department maps in such a way that human habitations, agricultural lands and even disputed areas were kept out of forest areas. This map was subjected to further revisions after the first Pinarayi Ministry assumed power, and the Department kept chiselling away at it till it acquired its present near-zero ESZ form.

The draft map that is now being published had taken out all human habitations, structures and livelihood spaces from the ambit of ESZs. This map is already under the consideration of the Centre. According to the Chief Minister, the Centre was about to issue a draft notification on ESZs on the basis of this map when the Supreme Court delivered its June 3 order this year.

The Chief Minister said even this map would be revised if people could point out omissions.