NEW DELHI: In 10 years of his tenure as the chairman of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened its first meeting on Monday.
NBWL was constituted in 2003 and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee chaired its first meeting on October 15, 2023. After Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister in 2004, he chaired five meetings of the wildlife board till 2012.
NBWL is a statutory body headed by the Prime Minister that advises the government on matters pertaining to wildlife conservation, particularly within forests. The board is responsible for guiding the government’s decisions on matters related to wildlife conservation and issuing approvals for projects in forests.
In the absence of NBWL meetings, the standing committee of the board headed by the Union Environment Minister takes the decision on project clearances and advises the government.
According to the Centre’s data, since 2019, the standing committee has cleared more than 815 projects inside forests and over a lakh hectares of forestland was diverted for the non-forest use.
Former IFS officer BK Singh said there had been an uproar by environmentalists over the Prime Minister not chairing the NBWL meet.
“The PM is an important figure and his presence in the meeting is important. If the PM does not chair the meeting then the importance of conservation takes a backseat. In NBWL’s absence, the standing committee of NBWL processes project clearances in the forest areas. Over 90 per cent of the projects were given clearance inside the forests,” he said.
Wildlife activist Ajay Shankar Dubey said: “In states, the respective Chief Minister chairs the state wildlife board and faces criticism over the decision taken by the board. Here, the powers of NBWL have been delegated to the standing committee and the Prime Minister escapes the criticism. We have seen the standing committee clearing controversial projects in the last one decade.”