The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change's wildlife panel has given green signal to installing 4G mobile towers in the core area of the Kanha Tiger Reserve to enhance the communication facilities of the Madhya Pradesh Police that is fighting Naxals. The Centre has also fixed the deadline to eradicate Naxalism by March 31, 2026.
The core area of a tiger reserve is the innermost portion protected under law and no human intervention is allowed. In light of the fact that the suggested mobile tower installation within Supkhar village lies within the core area of the reserve, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had not given its sanction to the proposal in the past because it was ecologically sensitive.
"But since the proposal has been recognised by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as an essential need for improving communication infrastructure in remote forested tracts to aid operations against Left Wing Extremism (LWE), the project has the national security importance," a senior official said.
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The Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) was told that the Madhya Pradesh Police had proposed the usage of 0.0324 ha of forest area in the core area of the reserve for anti-Naxal operation. The proposal is recommended by the Madhya Pradesh Government and its forest department.
The proposal has been accepted by the ministry with the rider that the mobile tower infrastructure will be decommissioned and dismantled after the threat of Left Wing Extremism is neutralised and the region is notified as being free of insurgent action.
"To avoid the overlapping of high radiation fields, new towers should not be erected within a distance of one kilometre of existing towers.". The towers must be constructed with extreme caution and care so that they do not interfere with the flight path of birds, and also do not enhance the overall radiations from all towers in the region. All the materials for construction will be transported from outside the national park and forest region. Construction operations should not be allowed to interfere with or divert natural water courses, like rivers or streams, crucial for wildlife," says the minutes of the meeting of the NBWL.
The Madhya Pradesh Chief Wildlife Warden has been requested to formulate necessary mechanisms to monitor compliance of conditions laid down hereinafter at different stages of the implementation of the project.
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