(IN) Fwd: Hunting Secrets :tehelka story

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cape india <capeindia1 wrote: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 20:35:53 +0530

" cape india " <capeindia1

" Dr.Sandeep Kumar Jain " <jeevdaya04

Fwd: Hunting Secrets :tehelka story

 

 

 

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cape india <capeindia1

Sep 7, 2007 2:09 PM

Hunting Secrets :tehelka story

gauravkatty

 

 

Hunting Secrets

 

 

RTI officers in Punjab fudge figures on wildlife contraband they possess

VIKRAM JIT SINGH

 

Chandigarh

A Right to Information (RTI) application filed in the Punjab Information

Commission (PIC) has shown how RTI itself has become another cover for

corruption.

 

When Ludhiana-based Subhash Chander sought details from the PIC on wildlife

trophies and live birds in the possession of the state's VIPs and forest

officers, he received a suspiciously short list. Chander then wrote to the

Punjab Chief Wildlife Warden (CWW), whose office furnished three pages of 21

high-profile names with a host of animal trophies and live birds against their

names. The Patiala office of the PIC had deliberately omitted these names. For

good reason. Patiala DFO (Territorial) Karamjit Singh, who signed the incomplete

list, ensured his wife's declaration of a pair of mounted sambhar horns went

missing. So did the declaration of a chital and a parakeet by the daughter of

his colleague, former DFO (Wildlife) PC Atalia.

 

The Patiala officers omitted from their list all animals and birds declared

under a controversial 2005 state government scheme. The notables who benefited

were Nabha Congress MLA Randeep Singh, who had declared a blackbuck skin. Then

Punjab CM Amarinder Singh had declared as " ancestral inheritance " as many as 81

red junglefowl, 19 chukor, six grey partridges, two black partridges and four

painted spurfowl at his New Motibagh Palace. His brother, Malvinder Singh,

declared as many as 1,251 wildlife articles The CWW list, however, says

Amarinder is only in possession of an unspecified number of red junglefowl.

 

The most significant omission in both lists is of articles declared after

October 14, 2003 ??when the Centre's Declaration of Wildlife Stock Rules scheme

lapsed ??which included a hopping number of shahtoosh shawls and tiger and

leopard trophies.

 

 

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ne150907HUNTING.asp

more detailed Story in Tehelka .com Magzine.

 

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for Care of Animals & Protection of Environment-India(CAPE-India)