Wildlife and Rights activist Ajay Dubey has alleged that the bureaucracy in the State, instead of saving tigers is working to serve the interests of the forest mafia by limiting the Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF) into files only.
Dubey in a statement here on Saturday said, “Government of India by providing 100 per cent financial assistance to the States asked them to form the STPF since 2008, but Madhya Pradesh in order to save the forest and mineral mafia did not form the SPTF till now. Tigers are being poached continuously in the State but the State Government is not forming the STPF.”
Dubey further said that the conditions have worsened that even the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) Ravi Shrivastava is also getting angry over the attitude of State Government over the issue.
He said that the Madhya Pradesh High Court while hearing our petition over the issue in 2014 asked the State Government to furnish its reply, despite that the State Government continued to form the force only in Government files and now in response to a RTI filed by us we have come to know that the bureaucracy of the Government is now planning to form on the lines of Assam Forest Action Force and the former Principal Secretary of the forest department Ajeet Shrivastava has put the proposal of forming SPTF into cold baggage.
The Wildlife and Rights activist said that due to the inexorable red tapism of the good for nothing bureaucracy of the State the SPTF is not being formed since last eight years due to that the incidences of tiger poaching are increasing. Karnataka, Orissa and Maharashtra in order to save the tigers in their respective States have already formed SPTF while the Madhya Pradesh, that has slipped into number three position from number one tiger State in the country, is stuck up in files over the issue, he added.