The Supreme Court on Tuesday put on hold a proposal by the West Bengal Government to sterilize elephants in the wild due to frequent man-animal conflict witnessed in the forest areas of north Bengal.
The court while hearing a petition to reduce elephant deaths on North Bengal’s railway tracks condemned the State’s decision as “regressive” and restrained authorities from undertaking any such “impermissible” step.
The matter was brought to the notice of the Court by advocate Tapesh Kumar Singh appearing for Jharkhand Government. He informed Court of a news report suggesting a possible move to introduce sterilization by the West Bengal Government to curb the growing elephant population. Frequent elephant deaths on the north east frontier tracks (Siliguri to Alipurdar) also became a reason for the State to introduce such measure.
Shocked by the insensitivity of the State Government, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Vikramajit Sen said, “If what is stated in report is correct, it’s absolutely impermissible and condemnable…We restrain authorities of West Bengal to take any steps to administer sterilisation or take steps of introducing any method by which natural process of procreation of any wildlife takes place.” The Court posted the matter for September 23.
Along with it, the bench expressed anguish over the apathy shown by Ministry of Environment and Forests that did not bother to be present during the hearing of the PIl filed by activist Shakti Prasad Nayak. To make matters worse, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar informed the Court that he had sought a joint meeting of Railways and MoEF a day ago but nobody from the MoEF was present to brief him.
Taking a stern view of such callous conduct, the bench ordered the presence of Environment Secretary in Court on the next date. The Ministry was asked to indicate what steps it took to identify elephant corridors and sought response on steps taken to prevent elephant deaths on railway tracks across the country. The Court modified its earlier order to allow goods trains to run in North Bengal tracks even during night but at low speed. It sought response from both Railways and MoEF on introduction of Wireless Elephant Tracking System and Satellite Navigation equipments as a possible solution to curb rising number of elephant deaths.