EC violates poll rules, posts forest officials on election duty

The Election Commission (EC) has violated its own rules by posting forest officials from across India on election duty, thereby exposing some wildlife habitats to poachers and timber smugglers. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 29, 2013, 20:24:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The Election Commission (EC) has violated its own rules by posting forest officials from across India on election duty, thereby exposing some wildlife habitats to poachers and timber smugglers.

The EC had directed all state governments and chief electoral officers in 1998 that no official from the wildlife parks and sanctuaries should be posted on election duty.

“The vehicles and staff of wildlife sanctuaries, national sanctuaries and national game parks should not be requisitioned for election duty,” the EC order had said.

Despite the order, the EC has deputed forest officials for election duty in five states where assembly elections are scheduled later this year. Officials from outside these five states have been appointed as observers and micro-observers to ensure third party monitoring.

The deputy director of Periyar tiger reserve in Kerala, Sanjayan Kumar, has been deputed for election duty in Rajasthan. SEH Kazmi, who manages a tiger reserve in the Maoist-affected Palamu district, is also on the election duty list. GS Bhardwarj, director of Desert National Park, will be on election duty in Madhya Pradesh.

Other mid and lower level forest officials have also been summoned with their official vehicles by state level and district level officials. This is bound to create a security vacuum in the poorly protected wildlife areas.

Prerna Bindra, former member of National Board for Wildlife, said the posting which will last for over a month is a violation of the EC’s standing instruction. “Protected areas are already acutely understaffed and we simply cannot afford to stress them further," she added.

MK Ranjitsinh of Wildlife Trust of India said in a letter to the EC that the protected areas are already facing a shortage of 22,000 personnel and election duty would “attract poaching and timber smugglers”.

Seeking EC intervention, the letter endorsed by former board members said that if the violation is not corrected it would pose a bigger danger in 2014 when general elections would be conducted.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.