On Sunday, the Congress criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for saying that decades had passed since the large cats were declared extinct in India and that “no constructive efforts” had been taken to bring them back.
The Prime Minister “is a pathological liar,” according to a letter sent by senior Congress lawmaker and the party’s communications head Jairam Ramesh.
“This was the letter that launched Project Cheetah in 2009. Our PM is a pathological liar. I couldn’t lay my hands on this letter yesterday because of my preoccupation with the #BharatJodoYatra,” he tweeted.
https://twitter.com/Jairam_Ramesh/status/1571360907825131520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1571360907825131520%7Ctwgr%5Ea4a0f6b4b217ff13c356b4e15b775de8cda3c1d5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ndtv.com%2Findia-news%2Fpm-narendra-modi-jairam-ramesh-cheetahs-in-india-pathological-liar-congress-slams-pm-in-credit-war-over-cheetahs-return-3354897
The letter that Mr. Ramesh published was written in 2009. In the letter, Mr. Ramesh, who served as the UPA-II government’s minister of the environment and forests, requests that a representative of the Wildlife Trust of India put together a plan for the reintroduction of cheetahs.
In accordance with an initiative aimed at recovering their population in India, Prime Minister Modi released eight cheetahs brought in from Namibia into a quarantine area at the Kuno National Park in Madhya yesterdayPradesh.
In the 1940s, hunting and habitat depletion led to the extinction of the cheetahs, which were known for their lightning-fast running. After some conservationists contended that importing the African cheetah for restoration in India violated the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) reintroduction rules, the UPA government’s intention to restore the large cats was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2012.
Five years later, in 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority submitted a request to the court, claiming that the IUCN had recognised the procedure of reintroducing a species as legal.
The plan was eventually approved by the court, which also issued a comprehensive research order.
Source: NDTV
