India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi released cheetahs into quarantine enclosures in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday.
The national park is located in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district, located around 165 km from Gwalior.
PM Modi said that though India declared cheetahs extinct in 1952, it is unfortunate that no constructive efforts were made to reintroduce the fastest land animal for decades. He added:
“Project Cheetah, under which the cheetahs were reintroduced in the country after they became extinct seven decades ago, is our endeavour towards environment and wildlife conservation. 21st century India is giving a message to the whole world that economy and ecology are not conflicting fields”.
However, many people didn’t like the fact that PM Modi was successful in bringing back the endangered species ‘big cats’ to India.
Indian National Congress party was quick to point out that the proposal for ‘Project Cheetah’ was prepared in 2008-09 and approved by the then Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. It added that in 2013, the Supreme Court had stayed the project, before approving it in 2020, paving the way for the return of the cheetahs.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is busy on his Bharat Jodo Yatra, took some time out of his busy schedule and asked on Twitter: “8 cheetahs have come, now tell me, Why didn’t 16 crore jobs come in 8 years?”
However, amongst these disconcerted voices the Former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav stood out for his tweets and ignorance of cheetahs.
Yadav who is now the Leader of the Samajwadi Party and the Leader of Opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, tweeted: “सबको इंतज़ार था दहाड़ का… पर ये तो निकला बिल्ली मौसी के परिवार का.” [We were waiting for a roar … but this animal turned out to be a member of the cat family.]
Netizens were quick to highlight and point out the failure of the Australian education system as Yadav ironically holds a Master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Sydney.
Yadav’s tweet can be a reference to an earlier floated idea of finding a second home for Gir lions. In the early 1990s, the Madhya Pradesh government has started developing Kuno as a second home for Asiatic lions. However, the Gujarat government refused to share lions with Madhya Pradesh, saying they were the pride of Gujarat.
Cheetahs are part of the felidae animal family with more than 36 species that includes cats, lions, lynx, snow leopards, and tigers.
According to the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an international not-for-profit organisation, the five female cheetahs are aged between two and five years, while the males are aged between 4.5 years and 5.5 years.
As part of Project Cheetah, PM Modi released three of the eight cheetahs that arrived in India from Namibia. The eight cheetahs were brought in a cargo aircraft in Gwalior as part of an inter-continental cheetah translocation project and were released from enclosure number one following which about 70 meters away, another cheetah was released from the second enclosure.
WATCH VIDEO: PM Modi releases wild cheetahs at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh
