Three years after the Supreme Court directed that Asiatic lions be urgently reintroduced from Gujarat's Gir forests to a Madhya Pradesh sanctuary, nothing has moved so far.
The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has refused to disclose information exchanged with the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister in this regard, citing that it is still consulting a third party, according to an RTI reply.
Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are locked in a legal battle over the issue for the past few years, with Gandhinagar loath to part with its lions. Officials believe that the lions are "not reaching their new home any sooner in the near future".
The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 1989 pushed for a second natural habitat for the Asiatic lions for their long-term conservation and to save them from epidemics.
The Supreme Court in April 2013 ordered "immediate" re-introduction of lions to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh from Gir in Gujarat the only surviving habitat of 523 Asiatic lions in the world.
The court also fixed a six-month deadline for a committee responsible to accomplish the mission under the government's Additional Director General of Forest Wildlife (ADG-Wl).
While no lions have been moved, the PMO, recently replying to an RTI query of wildlife activist Ajay Dubey, said that it has initiated discussions with a "third party"
to decide if it should disclose any information regarding the matter.
The RTI sought information on letters exchanged between the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and the Prime Minister on shifting the lions from Gir to Kuno.
"The PMO also did not elaborate what this third party is. They also didn't say if such letters were even exchanged or not," Dubey said.
This signals further delay in re-introduction of the lions.
"I don't see lions being re-introduced in the near future, there has been no such proposal with the Gujarat wildlife department either. When there is a legal battle between states, what can the Centre does," a senior official from Madhya Pradesh Wildlife department asked said.
Recently, Ravi Srivastava, then Chief Wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh in a letter to Roy P. Thomas, Joint Director (Wildlife), Union Environment Ministry, urged that execution of the apex court's order be kick-started.
"The flash-floods in
Mareli Bhavnagar of Gujarat in July 2015 resulted in washing out of 10 Asiatic lions. This is what all the time scientists were referring to about occurrence of natural calamity," the letter procured by Dubey pointed out.