The State government on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court of having constituted seven teams of forest officials to visit Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Odisha, Gujarat and Kerala to study the best practices they adopted to eradicate the invasive species Seemai Karuvelam (Prosopis juliflora).
A Full Bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy were told by Additional Advocate-General S. Silambanan that the teams which visited Rajasthan and Odisha alone had submitted their reports so far and reports were awaited from the other five teams.
After recording his submission and directing the government to expedite the process of taking a policy decision on eradication of Seemai Karuvelam, considered harmful to the environment and the water table, the judges granted two weeks for the Additional Advocate-General to place the policy decision before the court.
The Full Bench was seized of a batch of public interest litigation petitions filed by various individuals, including Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Vaiko, seeking a direction to the State to annihilate the Seemai Karuvelam trees from the State.
After the court suggested at the last hearing that Tamil Nadu could study the best practices followed in other States, the government on February 23 constituted a team comprising Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers V. Naganathan and S. Anand to visit Rajasthan for three days and submit a report.
Similarly, IFS officers Deepak Srivastava and V.C. Rahul were sent to Madhya Pradesh, K.V. Giridhar and Bhargava Teja to Telangana, T.V. Manjunatha and Deepak S. Bilgi to Karnataka, Subrat Mohapatra and Sumesh Soman to Odisha, A. Periyasamy and Kashayap Shasank Ravi to Gujarat and Abishek Tomar and Vismiju Viswanathan to Kerala.
They were asked to study the challenges posed by various invasive species, especially Prosopis juliflora, and submit their reports.
