The carcass of a full-grown Royal Bengal tiger was found on a sand isle of the Brahmaputra to the north of the core area of the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) on Sunday.
A senior park official said the carcass would be sent for post-mortem on Monday.
A team of park officials, a veterinarian and an NGO worker would reach the location on Monday for a detailed investigation, the official said.
Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh is taking on the NCP again - this time in its den in Maharashtra. And the bone of contention is a proposed coal mining project inside a tiger reserve.
In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the minister has clearly stated that permission cannot be granted for coal mining in the buffer zone of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in the state.
This is the second instance of Ramesh not giving in to the NCP. He recently opposed the commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal, a proposal that had the support of Union Agriculture Minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
The environment minister has been under tremendous pressure to permit mining in the Lohara West and Lohara Extension areas that lie within the TATR. The Adani group of industries was allotted captive coal mines at the sites in November 2007, when the prime minister himself held the coal portfolio.
The coal extracted from Tadoba will fuel a power plant to be set up by the Adani group in Tiroda in Gondia district. This is the constituency of civil aviation minister and NCP leader Praful Patel.
He has been vociferously demanding a captive coal mine because his constituency is reeling under a severe power crunch. A power plant is, therefore, urgently required in the region. But the environment minister clearly begs to differ.
Ramesh told Mail Today: "There is a rejection letter from my ministry saying that these mines cannot be permitted. I also visited the site on January 26 and have given the same opinion in a letter to the PM." Ramesh said mining could not be permitted in the region on four grounds. Firstly, the TATR was a tiger reserve and needed to be protected. Secondly, the entire region was thickly forested and rich in teak. The third reason cited by the minister was that even locals were strongly opposed to the project.
In addition to this, Chandrapur - the town closest to the TATR - was already an extremely polluted industrial cluster.
"Chandrapur is actually the fourth most polluted industrial cluster in the country with a large number of cement factories. Coal mining will add to this problem. The Western Coalfields, which carry out mining in the area, also have a very poor pollution record," Ramesh said.
The minister, however, has managed to stave off opposition from the NCP by seeking alternative coal mines for the Adani power plant in Gondia. "We have written to the coal ministry asking them to find an alternative site for the captive mines," he stated.
For his part, Patel told Mail Today: "We do need a power plant in Gondia, for which a captive coal mine is necessary. Alternative mines can be allotted to Adani and the respective ministries will take a call on the issue. I do not wish any harm to be caused to the environment." Earlier, Congress MPs from the Vidarbha region had written letters to party chief Sonia Gandhi, asking her to intervene and stop the mining project.
The BJP units in the area are part of the ongoing agitation against it.
When the Prime Minister's Office was apprised of the matter, Ramesh was asked to look into it. The environment ministry had earlier, too, refused permission to the mining project on January 7. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) also raised serious objections to it.
This is also the second time in the recent past that Ramesh has taken on his Cabinet colleagues over an environmental issue. He had opposed the project of another Cabinet colleague, road transport and highways minister Kamal Nath, to widen a national highway stretch that goes through the Pench tiger reserve.
The road connects Nagpur to Jabalpur and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) was very keen to widen it. The Supreme Court's central empowered committee (CEC) had observed that the widening of the road would cause harm to the sanctuary.
