Kolkata: India’s Supreme Court has intervened to prevent the death of elephants and other wildlife on railway tracks.
In response to a public interest litigation, the division bench of Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan and Justice Dipak Misra has issued an interim order asking railway authorities to explore restricting the movement of trains, including goods trains, through reserve forests at night and limit the speed of passenger trains to 25 kilometres per hour.
The court has also directed Indian Railway and the state governments of Assam, Odisha, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand to submit their views and to be present on January 21, for the final hearing.
Only the West Bengal government has presented its submission to the top court, asking to discontinue the movement of goods trains at night between Siliguri and Alipurduar, which is essentially an elephant corridor. The state also wants to divert fast moving and night trains through the Siliguri-Falakata route.
The court noted that at least 77 elephants, scores of bison, deer and even a tiger were killed by trains between 2007 and 2012.
However, the petition disputed the official figures contending that the number of elephants killed on rail tracks was several times more than what was being officially admitted. As many as 500 elephants have died due to such accidents in last five years, Shakti Prasad Nayak, counsel for petitioner Sanjeev Panigrahi told the court.
It also blamed the railway officials for not taking adequate measures to prevent such deaths.
Forest officials and wildlife enthusiasts have welcomed the decision of the apex court. “It was the railways which had created this problem in 2004 when it upgraded from the metre gauge railway track to broad gauge, thereby increasing train speeds, which resulted in deaths of innocent animals. We had been urging them [to act on the issue] but no one listened,” said Saikat Dutta, a wildlife activist.
Though Minister of State for Railways Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury refused to comment, without seeing the full order, officials said diverting railway tracks would prove too expensive, and reduction of speeds of good trains would also affect delivery in the remote regions.
