Fix timeline for notifying fresh list of elephant corridors in Tamil Nadu, Madras High Court directs State government

The Madras High Court has impressed upon the need for Tamil Nadu government to fix a timeline for notifying a fresh list of elephant corridors in the State. It has also called for a status report by July 25, 2025 indicating the progress made in this regard.

A special Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy passed the orders on a batch of forest related cases before it. Amici curiae T. Mohan, Chevanan Mohan, Rahul Balaji and M. Santhanaraman have been assisting the court in all these cases.

In September 2023, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests-cum-Chief Wildlife Warden had revealed a field study by an elephant corridor identification committee had brought to light preliminary information regarding existence of 36 corridors in Tamil Nadu.

As nearly two years had lapsed since then, the judges wanted a definite timeline to be fixed for devising strategies for consolidation, obtaining funds for corridor rebuilding and framing guidelines for ensuring public cooperation to avoid human-elephant negative interactions.

Filing a compliance report with respect to a series of other directions issued by the Bench on January 10, 2025; Coimbatore Collector G. Pavankumar said, necessary steps had been taken to implement the direction to install surveillance cameras to prevent illegal mining around forest areas in the district.

A private agency had submitted a detailed project report for installing Artificial Intelligence enabled surveillance cameras at a cost of ₹1.83 crore and the proposal was forwarded to the Commissioner of Geology and Mining on March 12, 2025 for sanctioning the funds, the Collector said.

The court was also informed that 270 cases of illegal mining had been identified and a penalty of ₹26.76 crore was imposed in 100 cases. The rest of the cases were being inquired by the jurisdictional Revenue Divisional Officer and action would be taken as and when the inquiry concludes.

The Division Bench was also informed of the action taken so far against the government and police officials for dereliction of duty and the engagement of a private agency to create mobile applications and an Internet portal for lodging complaints related to illegal mining.

After taking the Collector’s report on file, the judges decided to pass further orders on the issue on July 25.