The Rs 2,315-crore Hubli-Ankola railway line, cutting across the Western Ghats in Karnataka, has been shown the red signal by a Supreme Court panel on forest and wildlife, which said that the project’s “huge and irreparable” ecological impact would “far outweigh” its “actual tangible benefits”.
Last August, Railways Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, who is also a senior BJP leader from Karnataka, had claimed that he was in touch with Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on the issue and that the 168-km rail link project — conceived in 1998 primarily to transport iron ore from the Bellary-Hospet mines — would be cleared in a year.
However, in its report submitted earlier this month, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee (CEC) underlined that the net present value of the modified requirement of 727 hectares of forest land for the project works out to Rs 7,426 crore ? more than triple the project cost.