Forest lodges ‘corner’ entry into the state’s tiger reserves
Big Cat, Black Market
By Rahul NoronhaMADHYA PRADESHA
‘loophole’ in the Madhya Pradesh government’s official portal to make
online reservations to enter the state’s popular tiger reserves seems to
have made it easy for private jungle lodge owners to exploit the system
for profit. Local tour operators and regular visitors allege that genuine tourists
can’t find tickets because lodge owners flood the portal with proxy bookings in
advance. Drives into tiger territory are then resold at hefty premiums. Com-
plaints to the state wildlife department have fallen on deaf ears.
The state’s six tiger reserves—Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Satpura, Pench, Panna
and Sanjay-Dubri—are open from October till June and draw visitors from all
over the world. Online reservations open 120 days ahead of the season. The
status of available dates for the coming season, on mponline.gov.in, the official
website, shows that nearly all slots on holidays and weekends are already filled.
And this is how the system is being compromised:
across tiger country, lodge owners make group reserva-
tions in the name of their employees by paying Rs 1,550
per vehicle. Later, when their guests arrive, they simply
‘add on’ names for a pumped-up fee. For instance, most
reservations made on October 20 and 21 have been on be-
half of employees working at some of the reputed forest
lodges in the state. Saptarishi Sehgal, a tour operator in
Jabalpur, has filed a complaint with the chief wildlife war-
den. He has demanded that the facility of adding on names
to the original booking be discontinued. As things stand,
Sehgal points out that no slots are available during the
Diwali and Dussehra holidays or during long weekends.
Samir Chordia, a wildlife photographer from Bengalu-
ru who comes to Bandhavgarh 3-4 times a year, concurs.
He says the ‘add on’ feature is a nuisance that prevents genuine visitors from
planning their trips. According to him, proxy booking has prompted black-mar-
keting and profiteering. In many past cases, it was found that tickets booked for
a particular day were returned and rebooked the following day. Big lodges, with
their steep tariffs, can afford to lose money on cancellations.
The number of vehicles allowed in a reserve is limited by the park’s carrying
capacity. In the case of Bandhavgarh, a total of 56 vehicles are allowed in the
morning, while the limit is 55 in the evening. But with more than 1,000 hotel and
jungle lodge rooms available, the demand evidently far exceeds the availability.
MP has some of India’s best managed tiger sanctuaries. The forest entry
scam can only bring a bad name to the state. n6
Tiger reserves
in MP —Kanha,
Pench, Satpura,
Bandhavgarh, Panna
and Sanjay-DubriALREADY SINGED
ONCE, THE BJP HAS
BEEN CAREFUL
WITH ITS CRACKS
ON HARDIK26 INDIA TODAY AUGUST 13, 2018
STATES
attacking Hardik, which contri
buted to building him up as a
political entity with an appeal
spilling outside Gujarat’s borders.
The strategy now appears to be to
politically isolate him. The convic
tion, meanwhile, could put an end
to Hardik’s ambitions to enter the
Lok Sabha in 2019. He has report
edly been toying with the idea of
contesting with Congress support,
like Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani
did in the assembly polls.
Having failed to dislodge the
BJP in Gujarat in 2017, Hardik,
along with Mevani and antiliquor
campaigner Alpesh Thakore (now
a Congress MLA), has been trying
to find ways of building on the
antiBJP sentiment that shrunkthe ruling party’s tally in the as
sembly polls. But so far, the issues
they have picked haven’t really
taken off.
Like forcing the admission
of poor students to schools citing
provisions of the Right to Educa
tion Act or the raids on illicit liquor
dens to expose the corruption in
the state police. In the latter in
stance, in one area, they allegedly
forced their way into a woman’s
home in Gandhinagar. The home
owner later filed a police com
plaint accusing the trio of planting
pouches of alcohol in her house.
Hardik and the others have
nevertheless been drawing consid
erable media attention. Singed by
the trio once, the BJP isn’t ready to
write them off. “We have to keep a
close eye on their activities,” says a
party leader. nCLICK BAIT
Tourists watch as a
tiger passes by in
the Panna reserveAJAY TIWARI