Pinarayi Vijayan urges Kerala MPs to secure Presidential assent for Wildlife Bill to address human-animal conflict

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday (November 27, 2025) urged MPs from the State to work towards ensuring Presidential assent for the Kerala Wildlife Act (Amendment) Bill, 2025. 

Chairing the MPs’ conference ahead of Parliament’s winter session, Mr. Vijayan noted that the law passed by the Kerala Legislative Assembly in October envisages several provisions for expediting action against dangerous animals that injure humans and pose an immediate threat to human lives. 

The law, which seeks to mitigate the escalating human-wildlife conflict in the State, empowers the Chief Wildlife Warden to exterminate wild animals that have caused grievous injuries to humans. The law also enables the State to declare a species verminous when its population abounds to an unmanageable level. 

The meeting noted that wild boars posed an existential threat to the State’s declining agriculture sector, and farmers have called for their widespread culling. The law also enables the State government to downgrade the protection status of wild animals, including monkeys (bonnet macaque), from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Wildlife Act. 

The Bill also aims to cut through the complex red tape required to obtain Central government’s approval to manage the population and relocate troublesome wildlife species that prey on livestock and damage farmland, such as leopards and wild boars. The meeting noted that the Centre owed Kerala an estimated ₹620 crore for human-wildlife management. The Centre also owed Kerala the federal share of compensation paid to victims of wildlife attacks. 

On PMAY housing scheme

Mr. Vijayan stated that the Centre had raised the allocation for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the federal scheme providing free housing for homeless families, to 2.5 lakh per building. However, the decision has not yet yielded any tangible financial divided for Kerala, which still receives only ₹1.5 lakh of the Centre’s share. In contrast, Kerala has raised the State government’s allocation for the scheme from ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh. Local bodies bear the remaining building costs, he said.

Mr. Vijayan asked the MPs to persuade the Centre to remove the condition that the State government must brand houses built by the party using federal funds as PMAY houses.

Wayanad aid

He said the Centre had granted only ₹260.56 crore in federal assistance to reconstruct the landslide-hit localities in Wayanad, despite Kerala repeatedly requesting ₹2,221.03 crore in federal aid. 

The conference noted that the State’s demand to raise its borrowing limit to 3.5% of the GSDP was pending with the Centre. Kerala urgently needs to raise a loan of ₹17,500 crore to complete the Jal Jeevan Mission, which aims to provide piped drinking water to all houses. 

The Kerala government also demanded that the Centre compensate the State for the revenue loss sustained in the goods and services, automobile, cement, electronics, and insurance sectors due to the revised GST regime. 

The government told the MPs to persuade the Centre to exempt khadi products from GST. It noted that Kerala had moved the Centre for sanction to construct ‘Global City Kochi Node-II’ of the Kochi-Bengaluru industrial corridor. 

Mr. Vijayan informed the MPs that Kerala had written to the Centre, raising the State’s concerns regarding the Centre’s decision to draft a legal framework for offshore mining of atomic minerals, including operational rights, without taking provincial governments into confidence.