SC pulls up West Bengal for planning elephant sterilization

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday restrained the West Bengal government from going ahead with its reported proposal to sterilize wild elephants to reduce their numbers and, in turn, cut the number getting killed on rail tracks.

Interestingly, the information about the Mamata Banerjee government's proposal was provided by counsel for Jharkhand, Tapesh Kumar Singh. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Vikramjit Sen termed the proposal 'regressive".

Singh said West Bengal has decided to introduce contraceptives for elephants to prevent their procreation and consequently, reduce their number to avoid accidents on rail tracks.

"If it is so, it is absolutely impermissible and also condemnable," the bench said and asked West Bengal counsel Avijit Bhattacharya to take instructions and file an affidavit from the concerned authority.

"We restrain the West Bengal government from taking any step to administer any kind of contraceptive or introducing any method of sterilization which hinders natural procreative process of elephants or any wildlife," the bench said.

Another advocate Aparna Bhat mentioned a fresh petition on massive reduction in number of captive elephants and alleging that they were being illegally traded off. The bench listed this petition along with the petition by Shakti Prasad Nayak for protection of elephants on rail tracks for hearing on September 23.