Watering down of the WALTA by government alleged

​Hyderabad: The state government is allegedly watering down the implementation of Water, Land and Tree Act and many criticise the government saying that WALTA is just a namesake authority.

As per rules, environmentalists and representatives of civil society organisations at mandal and district level should be on the WALTA authority.

Enacted in the united Andhra Pradesh to protect water, land and trees, the WALTA authority was adopted by the Telangana government post bifurcation.

Though it is required to constitute mandal and district-level authorities, the government ignored the same till date. In fact, the state level authority should have panchayat raj minister, the chief secretary and other officials on it.

Besides, at least five environmentalists and civil society organisations’ representatives should be members in the authority and it should hold quarterly meetings to advise the government.

Under pressure from the High Court and environmentalists, the government constituted the WALTA Authority on January 29, 2016 just for namesake, it is alleged.

Representatives of NGOs are appointed to the state-level authority only on a nominal basis ignoring those NGOs that fought for the WALTA. Not a single mandal level environmentalist was found on the authority.

Save Our Urban Lakes representative Dr Lubna Sarwath told The Hans India that the government is not giving information on the extent of meetings held so far.

Doubts are being expressed whether the government is deliberately weakening the WALTA Authority. Felling of trees, around KBR Park, here as part of the SRDP project has no permission from the authority.

The question of giving permission does not arise when the meetings are held regularly. To facilitate felling of trees, the state government revived the Tree Protection Committees of 2008. A report has been submitted to the National Green Tribunal to this effect.