New Delhi, July 12 -- The Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL) - India's top wildlife conservation watchdog - approved 96.5% of industrial and infrastructure projects proposed on protected forest land it assessed over the past decade, according to an analysis of official records, as campaigners accuse the body of rubber-stamping clearances with little scrutiny.

A scrutiny of minutes-of-meeting data available online since 2016 shows that across the 52 meetings held in this period, 2,448 development proposals were placed before the committee: 572 were deferred, and of the 1,876 considered, 1,810 were cleared and 66 rejected.

The functioning of both the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) and its standing committee...