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 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 has been under criticism by experts, with a recent petition filed before the Delhi high court claiming the SC-NBWL was "recklessly clearing projects" at a high approval rate. The Delhi high court pulled up the Centre on Wednesday for "treating every statutory body as an extension of the government's arm." P7...