A day ahead of the State level Tiger Cell meeting in the State capital wildlife activist Ajay Dubey has termed the Cell as ‘defunct’ and demanded to dissolve it.
Notably, the Cell was constituted in the year 1994 and till then only a few meetings of it had taken place, moreover whatever decisions taken in those meetings remained closed in files since then.
Dubey while talking to The Pioneer said, “The State level Tiger Cell was formed jointly by Wildlife wing of the Forest department and the CID with the aim to provide best protection to tiger that comes under the endangered species. But the cell formed with much fanfare remains defunct and has become just a paper tiger as it has not only failed to secure the tigers in the state but has also failed to trace the poachers who have killed tigers in the State.”
Dubey further said that after remaining defunct for about five years the Cell woke up early this year when its meeting was held on January 15 in which many decisions were taken besides endorsing the minutes of the last meet that was held on April 19, 2010.
He said that the Cell is paper tiger as there seems no implementation of its decisions was on grassroots. CID does not help the Cell at all that could be judged from the two incidences in which Forest department sought its help and the investigating agency showed cold face. The first incidence in which the Cell sought the CID help was in 2013 when poachers tried to hack the radio collar of a tiger in Satpura Tiger Reserve. The PCCF wrote to the CID providing details that someone from Pune tried to hack the radio collar of the striped feline but the CID did not showed any interest in taking up the case while the second occasion when the investigating agency showed cold face to the forest department was when a tiger was poached just outside the farmhouse of State assembly’s deputy speaker Rajendra Singh in March this year. The forest department approached the CID and like earlier occasion the CID failed to took any remarkable action over it, he added.
The wildlife activist said that in such circumstances there is no fun of holding meeting of a defunct body and to spend hard earned taxpayer’s money over it, hence we demand to dissolve the State level Tiger Cell so that exchequers expenses could not be wasted any further over it. .
The Forest department though claims that the joint efforts of the police and forest personnel have yielded positive results and that the Cell meets regularly to take account of the progress as well as the shortcomings in its efforts.