NEW DELHI: Two years after the Supreme Court had green flagged the project to introduce African cheetahs in various sites while ordering a proper study on the subject, India will today welcome the big cats as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release them into an MP wildlife sanctuary.
However, the occasion also reminds of legal tangles that initially blocked their arrivals and how the top court of India, first stopping their entry, ultimately agreed to let them in.
The proposal to bring the cheetah, which was declared extinct in the country in 1952 back, was initiated by the Wildlife Trust of India in 2009.
A decision was taken by experts from across the world, the Environment Ministry, and representatives of the state governments to conduct site surveys for exploring the reintroduction potential of the cheetahs.
The expert panel set up by the central government in 2010 after site surveys recommended Kuno Palpur as the preferred location for their introduction.
Based on this the MoEF around 2012 had decided to import African Cheetahs from Namibia to India and to introduce the same at Kuno.
However, the plan was stalled by the SC’s forest bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and CK Prasad on April 15 2013, when it quashed the order of MoEF to introduce African Cheetahs into Kuno by saying that the same “could not stand in the eye of law.”
In 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (“NTCA”) had again approached SC seeking its permission to introduce the species in suitable sites in India submitting that African Cheetahs would be introduced on an experimental basis in a carefully chosen habitat, will be nurtured and watched to see whether it can adapt to the Indian conditions.
NTCA had also assured the court that the species would be shifted to another habitable forest in case them facing some difficulties.
A bench of the then CJI SA Bobde, BR Gavai and Surya Kant on January 28, 2020, however fast-tracked the introduction of a cheetah by constituting a committee of experts to be headed by former IAS Dr MK Ranjit Sinh.
“It is not desirable that this action of introducing the African Cheetahs into India be left to the sole discretion of the NTCA but we consider it appropriate that NTCA be guided and directed by the Committee of Experts in the field who would carry out the survey for the best location for introducing the African Cheetahs in India and take a careful decision about the viability of introducing this animal on a larger scale. The expert committee shall also supervise the entire process and NTCA shall be guided to act in coordination with the expert committee,” the court’s order said.
The SC’s order paved a way for the reintroduction of Cheetahs in National Parks under the ‘Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India’.