CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Wetland Authority (TNWA) has informed the Madras High Court that it needed to consult the concerned government departments before finalising the draft for notifying 100 wetlands in the State.
Additional Advocate General (AAG) J Ravindran filed an additional affidavit before the first bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy on Thursday, while hearing of a suo motu case on wetland conservation, on behalf of Deepak Srivastava, additional principal chief conservator of forests and member secretary of TNWA.
He said Tamil Nadu Finance Minister announced a programme, Tamil Nadu Wetlands Mission (TNWM), for ecological restoration of 100 wetlands in a period of five years for improving the livelihood of the dependent communities.
Of the hundred wetlands identified, draft notification proposals for 29 have been submitted to the State.
The ecological restoration mandatorily requires notification of the wetlands, for which, the concerned government departments have to be consulted before getting approval on the draft notification from the State government; and this has led to procedural delay, the affidavit stated. Seeking four weeks, the affidavit informed that the draft would be put up in the public domain for a period of 60 days.