SC gives Gujarat's lion share to MP

The Supreme Court on Monday directed Gujarat government to send some Asiatic lions – that chief minister Narendra Modi insisted were the state’s “pride” – to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno-Palpur wildlife sanctuary. HT reports.

Updated on: Apr 16, 2013, 02:14:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Madhya Pradesh will get Gujarat’s pride -- lions from Gir -- but not the fastest animal on planet, cheetahs from Africa.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed Gujarat government to send some Asiatic lions – that chief minister Narendra Modi insisted were the state’s “pride” – to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno-Palpur wildlife sanctuary.

But the court refused to put Cheetahs imported from Africa in the same forest after wildlife experts warned that the lion and the cheetah may not live in peace there and kill each other.

The environment ministry had decided to import Cheetahs for Kuno-Palpur after Modi repeatedly refused to part with lions -- found in wild only in Saurashtra’s Gir national park -- for a second home fearing an apparent loss in lion tourism.

An expert committee headed by former Indian Forest Service officer MK Ranjit Singh identified Kuno as a perfect place for re-introduction of Cheetahs, which had got extinct from India in 1952s.

Kuno is in Sheopur district, which had cheetah population till they were hunted down in early 1900s. The Union Cabinet had approved Rs 100 crore for the ambitious trans-continental wildlife relocation project.

But, wildlife biologist Fayaz Khudsar, who had worked hard to develop Kuno as an alternative lion habitat during his student days and had filed public interest litigation in apex court for lion relocation, had different view.

He felt that if Kuno get cheetahs, a second home for lions would remain a pipe dream. He, therefore, asked the court to scrap the cheetah project for sake of lions.

The court constituted an expert committee which concurred with Khudsar’s view and submitted its report to the court, which put a stay on the Cheetah project.

On Monday, the court constituted an expert body to decide on number of lions to be relocated and monitor the entire relocation process to Madhya Pradesh.

Ninety-two Asiatic lions have died, including 83 of natural death, in the past two years in Gujarat's Saurashtra region while there has been no case of poaching.

As per the government data, 46 lions each died in 2011 and 2012. Out of the total 92 lions dying in the past two years, 43 were cubs, 29 female and 20 male felines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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