The state’s recent introduction of a safari showcasing this animal is a political move and is enveloped in false claims and irregularities
By Rakesh Dixit
What has been touted by the Madhya Pradesh (MP) government as the “world’s first white tiger safari” has been embroiled in false claims and corruption. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan inaugurated this safari in Mukundpur in Satna district on April 3 with much fanfare. But his government’s widely advertised claim that this is the world’s first white tiger safari is false as Odisha’s Nandankanan Zoological Park had this distinction way back in October 1991.
“The Nandankanan Zoological Park has had a white tiger safari since October 1, 1991,” park director Dr Sudarsan Panda was quoted by The Statesman as saying on the day the Mukundpur safari was inaugurated. “Ours was the first white tiger safari in the world and it is still continuing,” Panda said.
ODISHA’S CLAIM
And this is something that MP forest officials could not have been unaware of. After all, they had negotiated, albeit unsuccessfully, with their Nandankanan counterparts for parting with two white tigers for the Mukundpur safari three years ago. Chouhan had even written to his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik in this regard. Patnaik, however, refused to oblige him, citing poor tiger conservation efforts in MP.
Even the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had in December 2013 refused to give its nod for introduction of white tigers in MP, saying these animals had no “conservation value”.
Wildlife expert and retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer PM Lad concurs with the NTCA stand. He said that the white tiger is abnormal, looks different, and can’t survive in the wild. “It’s good as a showpiece to attract people in zoos but nothing beyond this.”
Another senior IFS officer who didn’t want to be named said the decision to set up the Mukundpur safari was purely political and the only gain to the ruling party was the emotional bonding of people in the Vindhya region with the white tiger. It was Chouhan’s public relations minister Rajendra Shukla who had mooted the safari idea. The minister, who hails from Rewa, is keen to capitalize on the deep sense of collective pride that the people of this region have for the white tiger whose legacy goes back a century.
TIGER TALES
In December 1915, Maharaja Gulab Singh of Rewa caught a two-year-old white tiger cub. It lived in captivity at the Maharaja’s summer palace for five years. The tiger was then stuffed and sent as a gift to King George V as a sign of India’s loyalty to the British Crown.
Thirty-six years later, Maharaja Gulab Singh’s son, Martand Singh Judeo, captured a white tiger cub on May 27, 1951. He domesticated it and christened it “Mohan”. It was known as the father of all Bengal white tigers in the world, but this was not true. There were several captures and a large number of sightings (and shootings) prior to this. For instance, in one of the earliest records, a white tiger was displayed at Exeter Change in London in 1820. Between the 1920s and 1930s, 15 white tigers were killed in Bihar alone.
After a series of unsuccessful attempts at breeding in the private enclosure at Maharaja Judeo’s Govindgarh Palace, Mohan’s mating with Radha, a normal tigress, produced four cubs on October 30, 1958.
Later, Mohan fathered 30 more cubs of which 21 were white. But by 1976, white tigers vanished from Govindgarh forest. And it is now, 40 years later, that they have made an appearance due to Shukla’s efforts.
He has been so impatient to implement his pet project that he prevailed upon Chouhan to lay a foundation stone on February 3, 2012, for the proposed safari, zoo and rescue center. And this, despite Madhya Pradesh having no clue where to procure white tigers from.
Two BJP-ruled states—Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra—came to Chouhan’s rescue. Last year, two white tigers were shifted from Maitri Bagh Zoo in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. Two Bengal tigers were also brought from Aurangabad Zoo in Maharashtra this year.
But the exercise of getting white tigers to MP has been fraught with irregularities. On April 1, forest minister Gauri Shankar Shejwar admitted during a debate on a calling attention notice that there had been corruption and irregularities in the construction work of the white tiger safari. Three Congress MLAs accused the then chief conservator of forest, PK Singh of Satna, of misappropriating Rs 17 crore from the Rs 50-crore safari project which is spread across 25 hectares. Sukhendra Singh, one of the three MLAs, even took on the corrupt officer outside the assembly—he slapped him in full public view at Satna railway station the next day. Curiously, while he told the media about his “direct action” against the “corrupt” officer, Singh claimed the “angry lawmaker had only shouted at him”.
It is obvious that tiger politics is getting the better of many people in this state.