Guwahati, Nov. 9: The Assam forest department has approached the Supreme Court for a tranche, deposited with a committee of the court, for developing Kaziranga National Park.

The sanctuary suffered huge losses in the recent floods. The forest department is actively following it up with the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court to obtain the tranche of Rs 1 crore which Oil India Limited (OIL) had deposited as a compensatory payment, to facilitate a development project pivoted on afforestation measures. “We are proactively trying to get the sum of Rs 1 crore which was meant for infrastructure development and is still lying with the committee,” a senior forest official said.

A source said OIL was asked by the Central Empowered Committee of the apex court about one-and-a-half years ago to deposit Rs 1 crore in cash as compensatory afforestation for installing an optical fibre link between Upper and Lower Assam, which runs through the park. The oil major had deposited this amount.

“This was demanded as compensation since laying down the line could have damaged the park,” the official said. However, the park was ravaged by floods recently, which caused losses totalling around Rs 2 crore. Huge swathes of infrastructural facilities were destroyed.

As the source explained, the problem was that the money has to be transferred to an ad hoc body created by the empowered committee. This has not been done till now. “It has to be first transferred to a fund, and then the money can be transferred to the forest department,” he said.

The sum of Rs 1 crore was meant to be used for developing the park’s infrastructure, such as building anti-poaching camps and other facilities.

The Central Empowered Committee was set up by the Supreme Court in 2002 to advise it on forestry, wildlife and related matters.