Letter to the Hon'ble Minister for Railways,Smt. Mamata Banerjee
To
The Hon'ble Minister for Railways,
Smt. Mamata Banerjee,
Rail Bhavan,
New Delhi.
Respected Madam,
CEMO extends its Good Wishes to you, and sincerely hopes that your efforts and endeavours to stop the accidental deaths of the elephants on the railway tracks in Norh Bengal by the speeding trains.We wish to remind you that our crusade against the repetition of these deaths, is continuing unabated, as we read almost the very next day after the news announcement that you had made about the engine drivers being made to decrease the running speed especially the night trains, but despite that an elephant calf and later a bison too had been run down.
Madam we wish also to take a more serious stand on this, with the recent court ruling against a long standing case of similar accidents in the Rajaji National Park of the Northern Railways where the High Court has finally given a 3 years jail term to the engine driver.We expect a similar action to be meted out to the rash engine driver who ran over 7 elephants on one night in the forests of Jalpaiguri district.
We would want you to completely stop the night trains in this region, monitor the speed of the trains, be in close communication with Forest officials in the area tomonitor the presence of these large animals in their migration corridor. Surely all this can be done with the huge numbers of man power both in the Railways and in the Forest Departments of the Government of India.
CEMO works to build an awareness in the public especially with the growing younger generation to whom we should leave behind a precious legacy of our forests and endangered animals that we need to protect at all costs and not decimate them so callously.
We trust Madam that you too share our sentiments, and we shall support your endeavours, but we would have to take a hard stand in the near future with a PIL more so with the precedent before us of the recent court verdict against the Engine driver of a case that had been long pending in the court.
We hope that we do not have to resort to that.
With Sincere respects,
yours Truly,
GV
Secretary CEMO, and all members.
Awful accidents at North Bengal and Bandhavgarh
CEMO members are distressed and dismayed that no uproar is being raised in Parliament or in the corridors of power that our wild life, the Elephants and Tigers are so callously and cruelly being killed. No one seems accountable for these heinous acts of destruction of our really endangered tigers and elephants in their own habitat and forest reserves.
The news that a tigress with her 3 cubs were run over by a speeding jeep is so brutal an act,that nothing short of shooting the driver or hanging him seems appropriate enough. At one go to lose 4 tigers is an act of genocide almost!
Then again speeding trains in North Bengal that run on the known trail of the migrating elephants of North Bengal should be cautious and lessen their speed in those sections of the forests that are known to have herds moving on their familiar corridor through the forests.
A spate of deaths of elephants being run over by these trains that have changed to broad gauge tracks from the earlier intermediate gauge could be one of the causes of these accidents, which are again wanton acts of callousness and cruelty. Like human beings the herds linger around the dead team mate and refuse to leave the dead beast. How heart rending it is, and it not a stray incident but something occurring at regular intervals within a week.
Is someone reading this or listening to our Organizations appeal to move to seats of influence and responsibility and see that due action is taken immediately?
ALL MEMBERS OF THE CENTRE FOR ECOLOGICAL MOVEMENT.
CEMO
95 Rashbehari Avenue, Kolkata 700029.
