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The Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore (IIM-B) and the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-M) would carry out studies required for fixing the carrying capacity of the ghat roads leading to the Nilgiris and Kodaikanal respectively, the Tamil Nadu government informed the Madras High Court on Monday.
Appearing before a special Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, Advocate General P.S. Raman said both the institutions had accepted the government’s request and had identified two professors to lead the studies.
While Professor Amar Sapra from IIM-B had informed the government that he would require a month’s time to come up with broad guidelines and at least six months to file a final report after extensive data collection and analysis, a meeting with Professor Sachin Gunte of IIT-M was scheduled on Monday, the A-G said.
The government was in agreement with the court’s view on fixing a cap on the number of vehicles and tourists who could be allowed to enter the hill stations and wanted to assess the carrying capacity in tune with international best practices and by leveraging expert insights, he said.
He said the definition of ‘tourism carrying capacity’ provided by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) underscores the importance of estimating carrying capacity under various parameters such as physical, economic, socio-cultural, biophysical and ecological capacities.
Therefore, it had been decided that the 2020 guidelines framed by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for assessing the carrying capacity in hill stations and eco-sensitive zones should serve as a framework for these studies, he added.
The A-G also told the court that the State government had decided to engage the services of the experts from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to carry out the detailed studies required before determining the carrying capacity for protected areas and reserve forests.
After hearing him, the judges directed the State to take into consideration the suggestions made by amici curiae Chevanan Mohan and Rahul Balaji while studying the carrying capacity and also to include them in the meetings of the committee constituted for the purpose.
The court also insisted on putting some interim arrangements in place to regulate the movement of vehicles and tourists in the two hill stations in view of the tourist season. They decided to take a call on the interim regulations on April 29.
The judges asked Environment Secretary Supriya Sahu, the Nilgiris Collector M. Aruna and Dindigul Collector M.N. Poongodi to assist the court on that day in framing certain interim regulations on tourist movement in the hill stations.
