Photo: Samarjit Sharma. Numaligarh Refinery Ltd. built the 2.2 km. long wall to demarcate the site for a new township, and had also cleared trees and flattened hillocks to construct a golf course in this No Development Zone. Since the time of its construction, the wall has caused the death of an estimated 12 elephants, many of which tried to break through it to follow their migratory routes and access the water holes beyond the wall. In one tragic case, a young male elephant died of a severe hemorrhage after repeatedly ramming its head against the offending wall.
Environmental activist Rohit Choudhury, who has relentlessly pursued the matter, filed a case against NRL on the company's failure to comply with a previous NGT judgment of 2012 that had put a stay on NRL's Environmental Clearance. In violation of the order, NRL had continued destroying forestlands for the golf course and proposed township.
In the judgment pronounced on August 24, 2016, the NGT ordered the demolition of the wall within a period of one month; slapped NRL with a fine of Rs.25,00,000 as environmental compensation to be paid to the Assam Forest Department; instructed NRL to make “compensatory afforestation of ten times the number of trees felled"; and directed the state government to finally notify Deopahar PRF into a Reserved Forest.
The NGT order reads, “…[A]s 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 T. N. 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."
The NGT's judgment is a fortifying validation of the work put in by Rohit Choudhury, and the dozens of wildlife enthusiasts and conservationists across the country that followed and supported his case. Many of these people were moved to action after viewing the distressing video - [Elephant Route Blocked in Deopahar, Kaziranga] of an elephant herd trying to get past the wall. Rohit was represented in court by renowned environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary.
“I welcome the National Green Tribunal's judgment and I hope NRL takes it in the right spirit and complies with order as soon as possible. It is the question of the elephants' welfare and the environment and the sooner the area is restored and devoid of the wall and other intrusions in the area, the better. This judgment has increased my faith in the National Green Tribunal," said Rohit to Sanctuary's Purva Variyar, who has reported on the issue consistently since 2015.
Read more on the issue -
Wildlife Laws Violated, Elephant Corridor Blocked In Kaziranga Landscape
