Lucknow: Alarmed by tigers being overrun by trains at Uttar Pradesh's Dudhwa National Park, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has written two letters to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad to shift the track running through the famous reserve but is still waiting for a response.
The Chief Minister stepped in when routine correspondence between state government officials and the railway ministry failed to make any headway. However, two letters over the last three months have not elicited any response.
"The Chief Minister has written to the Railway Minister twice over the past three months; forget about a response, we are waiting for even a routine acknowledgement," said a senior official here.
To keep up the pressure, Chief Secretary Naveen Chandra Bajpai last week wrote to the Railway Board chairman on the issue and conveyed the Chief Minister's displeasure over the ministry's unresponsive attitude.
Uttar Pradesh principal forest secretary V N Garg pointed out that the matter was of some urgency with four tigers being run over by trains in the last three years thanks to the track that pierces through 80 km of the 500 sq km park near the Nepal border.
Wondering why the railway administration was so indifferent, Garg told IANS: "On the one hand the Prime Minister has set up a tiger task force to check the decline in the number of tigers and here is the Railway Ministry apparently least concerned with the fate of the country's prized animal."
Declared as a national park in 1977, Dudhwa accounts for 77 of Uttar Pradesh's 273 tigers count, according to the last census in 2005. The last nationwide census in 2001-02 of tigers put the figure of big cats at 3,642.
What has irked the state government even more is the cut in the Central Government's grant for Uttar Pradesh's wildlife - from Rs 24.2 million in 2005-06 to a paltry Rs 7.5 million in this financial year's allocation.
According to Garg: "The Uttar Pradesh government had urged the Central Government to release a special grant of Rs 40 million for the preservation of the tiger in the state, but our demand has apparently been overlooked."
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