Plug gaps in captive elephant transfer rules to prevent misuse: Jairam to Environment Minister

“I had supported the exception for ‘religious’ purposes, although the Rules should have specified this exception further. You had assured the House that ‘any other purpose’ would be clarified in the Rules. Unfortunately, the Rules do not still clarify what ‘any other purpose’ means. This leaves wide gaps for misuse,” Ramesh said in his letter.

Ramesh, the Congress’s communications chief, said that the present transfer rules “do not close the route for both wild capture and commercial trade of captive elephants especially from the Northeast to the rest of the country.”

“These are not imaginary fears as there have been recent examples of commercial transactions of elephants from Arunachal Pradesh to Kerala, Odisha and Gujarat. There have been serious attempts to transfer wild caught elephants to these states from the Northeast under the garb of captive and donations! These have been documented and are well known to your officials,” he said.

Wildlife protection groups and elephant conservation groups based in the Northeast and other parts of the country had in April urged the Environment Ministry to order an embargo on elephant transfers, especially from North-eastern states to other parts of the country, on grounds that using the provisions of non-commercial transfer of captive elephants, wild elephants were being caught from the forests of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

In May, a vehicle transporting 55-year old elephant Pratima and her calf was stopped in Assam by the state forest department to check the transfer permits. It later emerged that they had valid papers for transporting the elephant to Jamnagar. Subsequently, Assam-based activists wrote to the Supreme Court, seeking monitoring of elephant transfers to Gujarat when elephant veterinarians and rehabilitation organisations were available in Assam.