Finally elephants wins. SC opined in favour of the elephants.
The Supreme Court on Friday, 18th January, ordered Numaligarh Refinery Limited, a public oil refinery to demolish a 2.2-km boundary wall constructed on an elephant migration corridor in Deopahar Reserve Forest, near the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve in Golaghat, in Assam.
Dismissing the NRL’s petition in the apex court Justice DY Chandrachud, one of the two presiding judges in the case, said”Elephants have the first right on the forest. Elephants do not go to office in a designated route. We cannot encroach upon the elephant’s area,”
Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) had built the wall in 2011 to expand its operations into the Deopahar Reserve.
Wildlife activists and environmentalists had come down heavily on the refinery when a seven-year-old male elephant had died of haemorrhage in May 2015 while trying to force his way through the wall.
