Environment Ministry drills holes in AP request for forest land clearance

The Andhra Pradesh government's efforts to speed up the capital city formation centred around the ancient Buddhist site of Amaravati has hit another bottleneck. Already the State is pursuing a case before the Central Green Tribunal challenging environmental clearance given by the State government on the ground that the land acquired covered an ecologically sensitive area. Now the Centre has put on hold AP's request for acquiring forest land for the capital formation. On the contrary, the Environment Ministry put several questions on the proposed use of the land, the kind of structures planned there etc, pending clearance. The Central Ministry was now insisting on getting all details relating to the use of the forest land spread over 19,000 acres, for which the State sought clearance. The State has already acquired rich agricultural lands from farmers in the area. The questions have been raised by the Forest Advisory Committee, the apex body of the Environment Ministry, that accepts or rejects pleas for clerance of forest land. The apex body has put its own questions and sought answers for all its queries. `The Economic Times' has written an interesting article in regard to AP's request for forest clearance, stating that a denotification of forest land demand might extend to some 50,000 acres.