Ten Kilometres, or One: The Kaziranga Eco-Sensitive Zone Question

🗞️ Why in News The Congress is to hold a march against the proposed reduction of Kaziranga National Park’s eco-sensitive zone, reported on September 1, 2026. Assam has moved to notify a site-specific zone of about 1 km in place of the 10 km buffer currently in force on an interim basis.

The Dispute in One Table

Why the 10 km Figure Is Interim, and What That Means

This is the part that is almost always written incorrectly, so take it slowly.

An eco-sensitive zone is not automatic. ESZs are notified by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. The normal sequence is that the state government proposes a zone with a boundary and a schedule of regulated activities, and the Centre notifies it, first as a draft and then finally.

The 10 km figure is a default, not a finding. Where a state has not submitted a proposal, a wider default applies pending notification. The legal background sits in a Gauhati High Court order of March 12, 2026 in Jiten Engjai vs Union of India, which recorded that the Supreme Court had directed that a 10 km ESZ would apply where no state proposal had been submitted, and noted that as of that date Assam had submitted neither a final notification nor a draft proposal for Kaziranga.

So the 10 km buffer around Kaziranga exists because of the state’s inaction, not because anyone assessed Kaziranga and concluded that 10 km was ecologically required. Both sides of the argument follow from that single fact:

• The state’s case: a default figure applied for want of a proposal is a poor basis for regulating land use across five districts, and a site-specific zone drawn on evidence is better regulation than a uniform radius.
• The objection: if the state’s remedy for an over-broad default is a proposal that shrinks the buffer tenfold, the replacement is not obviously more evidence-based than the default it replaces.

The Supreme Court’s own position has moved

June 2022: the Court directed that an ESZ of at least 1 km be maintained around protected forests, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.

2023: the Court modified that position, observing that strict compliance could increase human-wildlife conflict and hamper the day-to-day activities of people living around protected areas. It retained a hard prohibition on mining within 1 km of protected areas.

The precision that earns marks. The Court did not mandate that ESZs shall be 1 km. It set 1 km as a floor in 2022 and then relaxed the uniform application of that floor in 2023 while keeping the mining prohibition. A claim that reducing a zone to 1 km is “in line with the Supreme Court order” is therefore a defensible reading of the 2022 floor and not a compelled consequence of it. Write it as a contested reading, not as a settled fact.

What an Eco-Sensitive Zone Actually Does

It is a graded regulation zone, not a second national park. Activities inside an ESZ fall into three classes:

• Prohibited: commercial mining, sawmills, polluting industries, major hydroelectric projects, use or production of hazardous substances
• Regulated: tree felling, establishment of hotels and resorts, commercial use of natural water, erection of electrical cables, major construction
• Permitted: ongoing agriculture and horticulture by local communities, rainwater harvesting, organic farming, renewable energy adoption

The conceptual purpose is to create a shock absorber: a transition belt between areas of high protection and areas of unregulated use, so that a protected area does not sit against an unbuffered land-use frontier.

Why the width is contested rather than technical. A wider zone captures more of the functional landscape, the corridors, catchments and dispersal routes that a park boundary drawn on a map does not follow. A narrower zone imposes fewer restrictions on people who live and farm there. The honest position is that ESZ width is a land-use bargain informed by ecology, not an ecological constant, which is exactly why the law asks a state to propose and the Centre to notify rather than fixing a number in a statute.

Why Kaziranga Specifically

The park. Kaziranga lies on the Brahmaputra floodplain in Assam and holds the largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) in the world.

Its designations, in order:

The animal’s protection status: the greater one-horned rhinoceros is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and is protected under Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.

The reason the buffer matters more here than in an average park. Kaziranga floods annually, by design and by ecology. During the flood, animals move south, out of the park and across the highway, to the higher ground of the Karbi Anglong hills. Those animal corridors run precisely through the land that an eco-sensitive zone regulates. A buffer debate at Kaziranga is therefore not an abstract argument about setbacks: it is an argument about whether the escape route from an annual flood remains passable.

That is the strongest single argument in this dispute, and it is available to an aspirant regardless of which side they land on.

The Politics, Reported as Politics

The background to the present march is an announcement by the Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, at Bokakhat on August 8, 2026, that the state would send the Centre a proposal within two months for formal notification and demarcation of the zone. He has also said the existing arrangement remains in force until the notification issues.

The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, led by state president Gaurav Gogoi, has held protests against the proposal, including at Kohora in Golaghat district and a rally at Dibrugarh. Counter-demonstrations by residents supporting the reduction have also been reported. Opponents have linked the proposal to hotel and resort projects near the park.

Handle the motive claim carefully. That a narrower zone would ease commercial construction near the park is a structural consequence of the change and can be stated. That easing such construction is the purpose of the change is an allegation, and it belongs in an answer as a stated position of the opposition, attributed, not as a finding.

UPSC Relevance

GS Paper 3. Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment; conservation of biodiversity and protected area management.

The Mains framing. This is a clean case study in environmental federalism: a central notification power, a state proposal power, judicial supervision, and a local population whose land use is the actual subject of the regulation. The way forward that scores is procedural rather than numerical: a published ecological basis for whatever boundary is proposed, corridor mapping as a mandatory input, genuine consultation with affected residents, and a monitoring committee with the standing to review the notified zone against outcomes.

A Mains question worth preparing. “Eco-sensitive zones were conceived as shock absorbers around protected areas. Examine the tensions in their delineation with reference to a recent controversy. (250 words)”

Prelims focus. The statute under which ESZs are notified, the proposer and the notifier, the 2022 and 2023 Supreme Court positions and what survived of each, the three classes of activity inside an ESZ, and Kaziranga’s three designations with their years.

📌 Facts Corner — Knowledgepedia

The current dispute:

• Congress is to march against the proposed reduction of Kaziranga’s eco-sensitive zone.
• Assam proposes a site-specific zone of about 1 km in place of the interim 10 km buffer.
• A state draft proposal has been reported as suggesting a zone of 1 km to 3 km.
• Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the plan at Bokakhat on August 8, 2026.
• The state said it would send the Centre a proposal within two months.
• Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi has led protests at Kohora and Dibrugarh.

Why 10 km applies now:

• The 10 km buffer applies by default because no state ESZ proposal has been notified.
• The Gauhati High Court recorded this in an order of March 12, 2026.
• The case is Jiten Engjai vs Union of India.
• As of that order, Assam had submitted neither a final notification nor a draft proposal.

The legal framework:

• Eco-sensitive zones are notified by the MoEFCC under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
• The state proposes the zone; the Centre notifies it, first in draft and then finally.
• In June 2022 the Supreme Court directed an ESZ of at least 1 km around protected areas.
• In 2023 it relaxed uniform application, citing human-wildlife conflict, but kept the mining ban.
• Mining remains prohibited within 1 km of protected areas.
• ESZ activities are classed as prohibited, regulated or permitted.

Kaziranga:

• Kaziranga became a National Park in 1974.
• It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.
• It was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2006.
• It lies on the Brahmaputra floodplain in Assam.
• It holds the world’s largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros.
• Rhinoceros unicornis is Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
• It is protected under Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
• During annual floods animals cross south to the Karbi Anglong hills through the buffer land.

Sources: Outlook India, Scroll, The Sentinel

Source: Ten Kilometres, or One: The Kaziranga Eco-Sensitive Zone Question — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Current Affairs