GUWAHATI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit may bring speed sensors on a highway flanking the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve back to life.
The Prime Minister is scheduled to visit the 119-year-old park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to about 65% of the world’s one-horned rhino population, for two days on March 8.
Six speed sensors worth ₹16 crore were installed in June 2022 at four animal corridors along a 44 km stretch of National Highway 37 to prevent vehicles from accelerating beyond 40 km per hour. This was to prevent animals crossing the highway, particularly during the high floods, from being run over by speeding vehicles.
A good number of animals, mostly deer, and occasionally rhinos, get killed by speeding vehicles on the highway every year.
There are nine designated corridors – Panbari, Haldhibari, Bagori, Harmati, Kanchanjuri, Hatidandi, Deosur, Chirang, and Amguri – for animals to move between the national park and the Karbi Anglong hills across the highway. Two speed guns each were installed at Panbari and Haldhibari, and one each at Deosur and Amguri.
The sensors started becoming dysfunctional in February 2023 before “going dead”, environment activists said. These functioned occasionally thereafter, especially when VVIPs of the country and abroad visited the park.
Assam Forest Department officials said the main reason why the sensors have not been functioning is because the vendors operating them have not been paid. The sensors are being handled by a Hyderabad-based firm.
“I think we are finally getting the funds. The speed sensors should be operational in about a week,” a senior official said, declining to be quoted.
“The arterial NH37 connects different parts of Assam, and Assam with other States in the northeast. But it cuts across critical wildlife corridors. The National Green Tribunal had, therefore, directed the installation of animal sensors at Kaziranga National Park,” Assam-based environment activist Rohit Choudhury said.
“The sensors were installed but the political bosses, bureaucracy, and the officers have been apathetic in ensuring they function,” he added.
On December 18, 2023, Mr Choudhury sounded the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change on the dysfunctional speed sensors at Kaziranga that were supposed to work 24X7. He said the sensor cameras placed at the Kanchanjuri corridor were removed for reasons known only to the Forest Department.
The MoEF&CC wrote to the Assam government on January 18, asking it to enquire into the allegations made by Mr. Choudhury and furnish a detailed action taken report. The government wrote a similar letter to Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Head of Forest Force seeking action at the earliest.
