Patna, Sept. 19: In an apparent violation of provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (amended in 2006), the Bihar government has made the development commissioner the chairman of the Tiger Protection Steering Committee.

A notification in this regard was issued by the environment and forest department on August 4 this year.

According to Section 38-u of the Act, the chief minister shall be the chairman of the steering committee.

The department has not only denied the chief minister this post, it has not spared its own departmental minister. According to the provisions of the Act, there shall be a vice-chairperson in the steering committee and the minister in-charge shall hold the post.

The department notification, however, does not talk of any vice-chairman as neither the post nor the name of the person who would occupy it figures in the notification.

The notification simply says that the development commissioner would be the chairman of the steering committee.

The error list does not end here. The notification says the steering committee has been set up in accordance with provisions laid down under Section 38-v of the Act, which deals with formulation of a tiger conservation plan. According to the Act, Section 38-u deals with the steering committee.

According to Section 38-u, the state government may constitute a steering committee for ensuring coordination, monitoring, protection and conservation of tigers, co-predators and prey animals within the tiger range states.

The Act further reads that the steering committee shall consist of the chief minister as the chairperson and minister in-charge of wildlife as vice-chairperson. It also talks about the other members who can be part of the committee.

Commenting on the mistakes in the Bihar government notification, environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta told The Telegraph over phone: “The notification is illegal as it violates the provisions of an Act made by Parliament.”

He said the word “shall” mentioned in the Act made it mandatory for the state government to notify the chief minister as the chairperson and the department minister as the vice-chairperson.

“The language of the Act make it very much clear that the committee would be headed by political executives and not anyone else and in this case it has been given to a serving bureaucrat, hence the notification of the department is not in consonance with the Act,” added Dutta.

Elaborating the point, he further said that like an MLA cannot be appointed as a district magistrate, a serving IAS officer too cannot hold a post meant for a political executive.

Dutta, at the same time, also maintained that going by the provisions of the Act, constitution of the steering committee was the discretion of the state government. But once it had decided to constitute the committee, the government had to follow the provisions of the Act.