Seven days after retaining some members of the previous committee for constituting the State Board for Wildlife (SBWL), CM Uddav Thackeray chose to confront the Centre over a railway line that is proposed to run through the Melghat Tiger Project. The CM wants the railway line to be constructed along the alternative alignment which will protect biodiversity in the core of the project that came into existence 48 years ago and has an attractive tiger population of at least 55 tigers.

Following the approval of the then BJP-ruled Maharashtra government (2014-19), the Centre has approved to convert the 176-km Akola-Khandwa meter gauge into a broad gauge track. The proposal was opposed by the SBWL and wildlife agencies such as the National Tiger Conservation Authority appointed by the Supreme Court. Activists had argued that several deaths in the tiger-man conflict were reported even while only four services of meter gauge trains ran in the past.