SC bars T.N. from transferring Nilgiris Collector-Move to protect official’s actions in elephant corridor

• The Supreme Court barred the Tamil Nadu government from transferring the Nilgiris District Collector without the court’s prior permission.
• A Bench led by Justice Madan B. Lokur passed the order to protect the District Collector from any backlash in the wake of a particularly bold report and subsequent initiative to seal illegal resorts in the ecologically fragile elephant corridor in the Masinagudi area near the Mudumalai National Park (near the Sigur plateau) in the Nilgiris.

         Fencing removal

• The Bench also allowed the State to file a report on the removal of electrified fencing around the resorts.
• The court was hearing a 1996 PIL filed by A. Rangarajan, wherein directions were issued that no construction would be allowed in the elephant corridor mentioned in the report of the Elephant Task Force titled as ‘Gajah’.
• The elephant corridor in the Nilgiris is 22.6 km long and 1.5 km wide,is the vital link for about 900 elephants to move between the Eastern and the Western Ghats.

The Hindu