'Good Work Done, But There's Always Scope For More' : Supreme Court Closes PIL Raising Concerns About Tiger Deaths

The Supreme Court today disposed of a public interest litigation initiated in 2017 to address the issue of tiger deaths in the country. The order was passed taking into account the petitioner's desire to no longer press the PIL (at this stage), as substantial steps had been taken by the Union on the issue.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar passed the order, reserving liberty for the petitioner to approach the Supreme Court (or the jurisdictional High Court) again.

During the hearing, the petitioner, who appeared in person, apprised the Court that he was happy with how much the situation had changed since 2017 (when he approached the Court). "We are doing better than what we were in 2017, so I am happy", he said.

Accordingly, the bench was inclined to close the proceedings.

Before the order was passed, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati suggested that the bench may go through the statistics once. However, Justice Khanna remarked that the bench had gone through the same and it was apparent that "good work has been done". In passing, the judge added that there is always scope for a way forward.

To recap, when the PIL was filed, the petitioner submitted that 41 tigers were killed in 7 months i.e., from January to August 9, 2015, as per data provided by the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Further, he claimed that 74 tiger deaths were reported in 2016 and the wild cats were killed by locals residing near the reserve forests either due to man-animal conflict or poaching.

As per the petitioner, the tigers were being indiscriminately, barbarically and monstrously killed by poisoning (by locals or authorities), shooting by Forest Guards, poaching, etc.

In 2018, a census revealed that there were 2967 tigers spread across 53 tiger reserves in the country. Five years later, in 2023, 30 tigers were reported to have died in India within 2 months. This prompted the Supreme Court to ask the Centre to ascertain the number of reported deaths of tigers.

Case Title: Anupam Tripathi and Anr. v. Union of India and Ors., WP(C) No. 683/2017