The Ministry criticized the report of the Wildlife Institute on the captive elephants for ‘copy-paste’, using the African traveler instead of Asian on the cover. Bharat News

In a letter addressed to WII Director Virendra Tiwari, Assistant Inspector General of Forests Sunit Bhardwaj said, WII scientist Dr. The report submitted by Emperor Mondol with a state-wise report did not complete the “expected benchmark”.

On contact, Bhardwaj refused to comment on the issue.

Mondol told The Indian Express The report was to review the progress, and the WII responded with an explanation for every point raised by the Ministry’s letter, and resumed the report.

In its letter, the Ministry listed 20 suggestions to help amend the report and take corrective measures to resume. It said that the project investigator Mondol was asked to provide a wide justification for the shortcomings.

The ministry stated that the project has been going on for more than four years, and there is an expectation for “more structured and clearly presented documents”. “The current version lacks clarity, not fully align with the standard format of a scientific report, and involves high level of text similarity, which is a matter of concern,” it said.

Saying that many fundamental formatting and material-related standards were not followed in the report, the Ministry said that it could not be considered for a review unless some important issues were addressed.

There are some issues raised by the ministry:

, The cover photograph painted an African elephant instead of the Asian elephant. WII was asked to replace the cover photograph with “high-quality, relevant-appointed picture”.

, The letter stated that the introduction section appears to be copied from previous reports or published sources.

Reacting to this, Mondol said this was the first time the ministry was conducting such an investigation. He said, “It is normal to take part from pre-reports in the introduction. We have corrected it and presented a literary theft-check certificate,” he said.

, The Ministry also flagged off the basic issues related to grammatical errors, drafting issues, lack of expansion of brief names and functioning problems among others.

, It also questioned the discrepancies in the data. “Table 2 cited 1,688 samples, but demographic details are provided only for 786 captive elephants. The position of the remaining 902 samples is clear – these duplicate, failed extracts, or still pending analysis?

, Regarding the Gaza Sucha app, the ministry said that the 786 captive elephants recorded through the report had a state-wise summary or chart deficiency, which is a major component of the project. “Demographic data lists 396 women and 375 men, total 771. However, a total of 786 captive elephants claim. The remaining 15 captive elephants should be clarified,” it is said.

project

The purpose of this project is to prevent illegal occupation and trade of wild elephants by tampering with microchip identity. Project Elephant Division is working with WII’s elephant cell to create a genetic database of all the captive elephants of the country. The process involves collecting biological samples from elephants and using molecular devices to assign unique genetic IDs.

In 2022, the High Court of Tripura also passed an order, directing the ministry to conduct proper DNA sequencing of captive elephants along with their descent to prevent young elephants from Wilde. The DNA sample is conducted in the WII laboratory. The information is then updated on an app called “Gajah thinking”. According to scientists, the database has given details of more than 1,900 elephants.

The project is running with the investigation of the Elephant Health Service and Welfare Committee, the prisoner of the Ministry. In his meeting on January 17, 2023, Mondol was asked to intensify the project to complete the database, which would cover about 3,000 captive elephants.