Acting on the instructions of Chief Minister Harish Rawat, the Pincipal Secretary, Forests, Dr Ranvir Singh has issued orders for an inquiry into allegations made against the principal chief conservator of forests, SS Sharma. Sharma is allegedly accused of various anomalies during his tenure as the PCCF (Wildlife) and chief wildlife warden. The inquiry will be conducted by additional chief secretary and Forest and Rural Development Commissioner (FRDC) S Raju within a month.
It will be recalled that earlier this year, the High Court in a PIl filed by Animal Welfare Board of India co-opted member Gauri Maulekhi had directed the State government to inquire into the allegations against Sharma and made a note on it, based on which a decision on the issue was left to the discretion of the CM.
Maulekhi had accused Sharma of various anomalies releasing copies of letters purportedly written by Sharma to the Corbett Tiger Reserve director in 2011 and 2013. In the 2011 letter Sharma had reportedly stated that he believed notorious tiger poachers Priya, Balku and other Bawaria poachers to be innocent in a tiger poaching case wherein they had complained of being harassed by department officials.
The letter also stated that Sharma had instructed the then anti-poaching cell director SK Dutt to focus on drafting his (Sharma’s) mail and not on catching poachers. The second letter purportedly written to the Corbett director by Sharma in 2013 sought sympathetic treatment to tiger poacher Dariya Bawaria. Additionally, Dutt had also written to Sharma himself pointing to lack of action taken in numerous poaching cases and other issues related to wildlife on which Sharma had been informed by Dutt.
Earlier in June 2013, the then PCCF Raghu Bir Singh Rawat had also sought clarification from Sharma who was then the PCCF (Wildlife) and CWW, regarding his unavailability at either his head office or camp office for a period of 10 days. His absence from his office at that time was seen as a point of worry at a time when three tiger bodies had been discovered in the recent past within a period of one week in the Corbett tiger landscape. Apart from Maulekhi, the leader of opposition Ajay Bhatt had also raised the issue of serious allegations leveled against Sharma. However, Sharma has been maintaining that there is no merit in the allegations.