Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday blamed the non-implementation of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report authored by eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil in 2011, as the major reason for frequent occurrences of devastating floods and landslides in hilly areas of Kerala.
"Whenever there is a natural disaster in Kerala, the Madhav Gadgil's Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report of 2011 is recalled. A decade later it remains unimplemented—despite devastating floods in 2018 and 2020", Ramesh wrote on twitter, a day after flash floods and landslides wreaked havoc killing people and damaging properties in hilly areas of Kerala's Kottayam and Idukki districts.
The former Union Environment Minister told the media that the report has continuing relevance for the entire Western Ghats extending over six states but sadly it has been mothballed while ecological destruction continues unabated.
His statement comes as many social media users raised the need of implementing Gadgil committee report in protecting the ecology of Western Ghats, one of the world's largest biodiversity hotspots, in the light of recent floods.