New Delhi, May 7 -- The Union environment ministry's expert appraisal committee (EAC) has cleared a 235-km greenfield expressway connecting Varanasi to Kolkata under the Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-II programme, with the project requiring the diversion of over 103 hectares of reserved and protected forest land in West Bengal - territory the committee noted falls partially within a tiger landscape. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) project, a four-to-six lane access-controlled corridor estimated at Rs.9,250 crore, was taken up at the EAC's 444th meeting on April 23 and 24. As a Category A project under the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006, it required mandatory environmental clearance given its scale and likely e...