#GoodNews: Wall Blocking Elephants’ Path in Assam to be Demolished

Elephants have the first right on forest, SC said, rejecting a plea by the Numaligarh Refinery in Assam.

“Elephants have the first right on forest”, SC rejects plea of Assam’s Numaligarh Refinery to maintain the wall.

(Photo: Twitter)

The Supreme Court on Friday, 18 January, ordered a public oil refinery to demolish a 2.2-km boundary wall constructed on an elephant migration corridor in Deopahar Reserve Forest, near the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve in Golaghat, in Assam.

Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) had built the wall in 2011 to expand its operations into the Deopahar Reserve.

Wildlife activists and environmentalists had come down heavily on the refinery when a seven-year-old male elephant had died of haemorrhage in May 2015 while trying to force his way through the wall.

Over the years, videos of elephants trying to cross the high-boundary wall barbed with wires have also surfaced. In 2016, NRL was ordered by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to demolish the wall within a month, but only a portion of it was removed, reported The Hindu.

Dismissing the NRL's petition in the apex court to maintain the wall, Justice DY Chandrachud, one of the two presiding judges in the case, said elephants have the first right on forest, according to LiveLaw.

“Elephants do not go to office in a designated route. We cannot encroach upon the elephants’ area.”

Justice DY Chandrachud

The court concluded, “As regards the wall with barbed wire fencing which comes in the way of Elephant Corridor, the same should be demolished. The area, where the wall has come up and the proposed township is to come up is a part of Deopahar 'PRF'. It also falls within the No-Development Zone notification, issued by the 'MoEF' in 1996. Thereby, any non-forest activity thereon would be in violation of the decision of the Apex Court in the TN Godavarman case (1996). Thus, the wall should be demolished within a period of one month and the proposed township should not come up in the present location.”

Environmentalists across the country applauded the SC ruling on Twitter.