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Captive elephants transfer: Jairam writes to Centre over ‘loopholes’ in rules
New rules to transfer captive elephants from one area of the country to another that was notified by the central government in March leaves loopholes that could potentially be misused, Congress MP and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday.
New rules to transfer captive elephants from one area of the country to another that was notified by the central government in March leaves loopholes that could potentially be misused, Congress MP and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday.
The Captive Elephant (Transfer and Transport) Rules 2024 notified on March 14 do not address the issue of both wild capture and commercial trade of captive elephants, especially from the northeast to the rest of the country, Ramesh said in a letter to environment minister Bhupender Yadav.
Ramesh had earlier objected to the broad exception being introduced to the non-commercial transfer of elephants created by the Wildlife Protection (Amendment) Bill 2022 under the clause “for any other purpose.”
“This was contrary to the recommendation of the standing committee (of which Ramesh was chairman) that had examined the bill in detail,” Ramesh wrote in the letter. “I had supported the exception for religious purpose, although the Rules should have specified this exception further,”
“You had assured the House that “any other purpose” will be clarified in the Rules. Unfortunately, the Rules do NOT still clarify what “any other purpose” means. This leaves wide gaps for misuse,” he wrote.
The Asian elephant is an iconic mega fauna found across India that has been in the red list of extinction risk of the International Union for Conservation of Nature since the 1980s. Indian elephant populations are threatened due to habitat loss, poaching, capture and commercial trade.
“Second, the Rules as presently drafted do not close the route for both wild capture and commercial trade of captive elephants especially from the northeast to the rest of the country. These are not imaginary fears as there have been recent examples of commercial transactions of elephants from Arunachal Pradesh to Kerala, Odisha and Gujarat,” Ramesh wrote in his letter on Tuesday.
“There have been serious attempts to transfer wild caught elephants to these states from the northeast under the garb of captive and donations! These have been documented and well known to your officials,” he added, urging Yadav to have a second look at the new rules.
Animal welfare organisations and conservationists have criticised the rules and recommended that the environment ministry publish a finite list of elephants that are eligible for transfer with valid permits. They wrote a letter to this effect to the ministry on April 1, alleging that medically fit elephants from several parts of the northeast, especially Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, have been illegally transported to other parts of the country.
The rules lay down the procedure to be followed for transfer of captive elephants within a state or between two states, HT had reported on March 16. “This rule, when read alongside the 2022 amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, which granted exemptions for transfer of captive elephants for ‘religious and other purposes’, might be susceptible to misuse, particularly in the trade of elephants,” Debadityo Sinha, lead of climate and ecosystems at think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy had then said.
Such practices run counter to the objectives of the wildlife protection law and the recommendations of the environment ministry’s task force that advocated phasing out of private ownership of elephants by closing legal loopholes, Sinha had said.
The ministry did not immediately respond to the letter from Ramesh.
