Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve - Equitable Tourism Options

The state government should have suspended the lease order and taken
overthe land on behest ofthe High Court judgement itself. Instead it opted to
back the hotel group hoping that the Supreme Court judgement would end
up in their favour, It was then that the Central Ministry asked the State
Government to reclaim the land leased out to the hotel group. Even then the
state did not act. In fact it wrote back to the Central Ministry that the project
has the backing up of the Government's Committee on Wildlife Tourism and
hence the project be allowed. The consequence of this was a second letter
from the Chief Conservator of Forests (Centre), South Zone, October'98
denying permission for the Taj project. Rejecting the Karnataka
Government's plea, the letter asked that "the responsibility for the deliberate
violation of provisions of Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, be fixed and
action taken or proposed to be taken against the official concerned be
reported within a period of30 days".
It was also observed that the Karnataka Government had flouted even the
recommendations of the Committee on Wildlife Tourism. The Committee
had objected various constructions including swimming pools, conference
hall, bar and tennis courts. The capacity of the complex and the buildings
were also not in harmony with conservation of wildlife and ecosystem, it was
pointed out. The No Objection Certificate granted by the Pollution Control
Board was against certain conditions, which required additional forestland if
it were to be complied with. The Committee had also imposed conditions on
the government and Wildlife Wing ifthe project was to be continued. It asked
the Wildlife Wing to obtain guidance from National Museum of Natural
History, New Delhi to convert the hotel into an 'orientation centre'. It had put
12 conditions to the Karnataka Government namely; converting conference
hall and board rooms to orientation and wildlife/environmental education
centre, abolition of bar facility, scrapping of tennis court project. freezing
capacity level to 128, scraping of proposal to air conditioning and diesel
generators. The visitors' number was also to be restricted to 100 per day. But
these conditions were not agreeable to Taj Hotels. It was in these
circumstances the letter of Karnataka Government seeking permission was
rejected by the Centre.
Judgement
On 20·h January 1997 the writ petition no. 31222 of 1996 was taken up and
the judgement passed. The outline of the judgement of Justice Bharukha in
the above case is as follows: