At Govind Pashu Vihar National Park in Uttarkashi, the arbitrary actions of a single Forest Department officer has put the entire transhumant community at risk.
NAINITAL: A thin tarpaulin sheet for a roof, a few blankets for cover and stacks of hay that are fodder for cattle and beds for them. For almost a month, 20 forest-dependent Van Gujjar families have been forced to live under the open skies after being banned from entering the Govind Wildlife Sanctuary citing the pandemic. On Tuesday, the Uttarakhand high court slammed the state government and the forest department for violating their human rights and ordered immediate steps to ensure their free movement.
“You cannot reduce humans to less than an animal existence… They are not animals. They are as much human beings as you and I are and they have the same fundamental rights and human rights,” Chief Justice RS Chauhan said.
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Delhi HC dismisses PIL seeking govt to take undertaking from plasma receiver to donate it after recovery ANI | Updated: May 03, 2021 16:03 IST
New Delhi [India], May 3 (ANI): The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking direction to the Delhi government to take an undertaking from the receiver of plasma that once recovered, he would donate the plasma within 14 to 28 days after being tested negative instead of first asking them to find a donor. Failure to do so shall lead to legal proceedings, the plea stated.
A bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh on Monday while dismissing the plea raised several questions like what would happen if the recovered patient faces another disease, or what will happen when a recovered patent has to immediately go abroad?
Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, India
– On a cool October evening in 1970, Bidawadi, then 21, was heading home after a day of planting trees in the forest when she received some bad news: a leopard had killed her buffalo. For her family, this would mean the loss of a secondary but crucial source of income selling buffalo milk. Bidawadi was distressed by the news, but not altogether surprised. Incidents like these were common. They came with a life of uncertainty for the community living in the forests of northern India’s Shivalik hills.
Fifty years later, those hardships seem minor compared with what the forest dwellers of Sodhinagar village in Uttar Pradesh state face today. On an afternoon in late October 2020, Bidawadi sits cross-legged on a charpoy, a rope cot, outside her hay-thatched hut dressed in a loose, white salwar-kameez. “The world has developed, but everything is the same for us,” she says, “except that we no longer have the work that gave us our identity.�