Vilas Patne, a lawyer based in Ratnagiri has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) via Advocate Rakesh Bhatkar with the Bombay High Court asking the State to provide the necessary permissions to establish the National Institute of Medicinal Plants (NIMP) at Dodamarg in Sindhudurg.
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The PIL says that the project will allow for research on medicinal plants in the Konkan region while also creating jobs. It further mentions that the State Government had asked the AYUSH Ministry to transfer the project to Jalgaon. The petition alleged that when the Ministry of AYUSH declined the proposal due to edaphic issues, the State proposed moving it to Latur.
“The biodiversity in the Konkan includes a variety of medicinal plants, which also provide raw material for use in indigenous Indian medicine. The demand for medicinal plants is increasing day by day and the changing global environment is affecting mostly these plants. This reflects the need to study and preserve their diversity. The Konkan area, which is a part of the Western Ghats, has biodiversity variation and is also one of the 32 ecologically sensitive areas in the world,” the PIL said.
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The petitioner said that the area originally chosen in Sindhudurg is well suited for an institute of this scale and is accompanied by the environment required for the study of medicinal plants, adding that if this site is not utilized effectively, there may be an extinction of the surrounding plants.
The petition was placed before a division bench consisting of Justices AA Sayed and Madhav J Jamdar on February 5. However, it could not be heard by the bench citing a “paucity of time”. The matter is expected to be taken up by Chief Justice Dipankar Datta on February 26.
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