Congress claim on Project Cheetah is bogus! Supreme Court had junked its project for being ‘totally misconceived’

New Delhi: Just as in the case of INS Vikrant, India’s premier indigenously-built aircraft carrier which Prime Minister Narendra Modi commissioned recently, the Congress has come back to claim credit for Project Cheetah too. On 17 September, also PM Modi’s birthday, eight Namibian Cheetahs were released in the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Calling the release of the hitherto extinct felines in India an “unwarranted” “tamasha”, Congress’ Jairam Ramesh tweeted his picture from back in 2010 when he had gone visiting the Cheetah Outreach Centre in South Africa as part of Manmohan Singh-led UPA government’s Cheetah re-introduction programme launched in 2008-09.

PM hardly ever acknowledges continuity in governance. Cheetah project going back to my visit to Capetown on 25.04.2010 is the latest example. The tamasha orchestrated by PM today is unwarranted and is yet another diversion from pressing national issues and #BharatJodoYatra 1/2 pic.twitter.com/SiZQhQOu0N

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 17, 2022

His party too has come out in his support. But, the senior leader as well as his party which is on a pan-India yatra, which will ironically not cover most of India states, forgot to tweet or tell the reason why their project bombed. It was none other than the Supreme Court of India (SC) which had stayed Jairam Ramesh’s project (he was Union Minister of Environment and Forests between 2009 and 2011) since in its original avatar it was considered “totally misconceived”. Why ‘totally misconceived’? Since, the UPA government wanted to introduce cheetahs from Namibia and the Asiatic lions from Gujarat’s Gir National Park and Sanctuary in the same habitat, the Kuno National Park, alongside each other! Experts back then had feared that the high rate of inbreeding and less genetic diversity among the Gir lions would make then highly susceptible to epidemics. The UPA government had also not consulted the relevant bodies in the matter before planning its project. The project was stayed by a forest bench comprising justices KS Radhakrishnan and CK Prasad, wherein they had stopped the Centre from going ahead with the “totally misconceived” venture without consulting either the National Board for Wildlife (NBW), the statutory body for te enforcement of the Wild Life Act. The matter had come to light only fortuitously: Actually, the Cheetah question had come up in front of the SC in another matter, relating to the reintroduction of Gir lions in the Kuno sanctuary, and it was then that the SC was informed that the MoEF had decided to introduce both lions and cheetahs together in the same proposed habitat. Senior Advocate PS Narasimha, the amicus curiae in the case, had sought the stay. Narasimha had said that the decision to reintroduce the cheetah had not been placed wither before the NBW nor had there been a considered decision in that regard. Then why is Ramesh claiming infringement of continuity? Congress’, at best, weak assertions of cornering credit for Project Cheetah seem to be emanating from the way the Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul Gandhi is turning out to be a damp squib. The worst commentary on the yatra’s outcomes so far are the Congress’ own plans that another yatra would be launched to cover the breadth of the country, since the current one meant only to ‘jodo’ the length of it. Also, since Jairam Ramesh is also the communications incharge of the party, must be feeling the pinch of such “unwarranted” events by the PM as releasing the cheetahs in the wild: certainly, the people of the country seem more interested in the cheetahs than Rahul Gandhi’s yatra that has so far touched only non-Hindu destinations in his quest to ‘jodo’ India. Most of all, Congress’ claim on Project Cheetah seems and sounds as if an also-ran is celebrating the gold medal! Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.