BBC banned from tiger reserves

In an unprecedented step, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has banned the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and its South Asia Correspondent Justin Rowlatt from filming across any tiger reserves in India for “breach of trust” during the shoot of its controversial documentary on Kaziranga Tiger Reserve. It has also advised the External Affairs Ministry to revoke the visa issued to Rowlatt and his crew and take “appropriate action to prevent their further entry into India, for a period of not less than five years”.

DNA has reviewed a copy of NTCA’s order banning BBC, in which NTCA recommended the Environment Ministry’s wildlife wing to disallow BBC from filming in any protected areas of the country for five years.

The action against BBC and its correspondent comes two weeks after NTCA served them a show-cause notice for allegedly portraying Kaziranga’s policy of shooting poachers in a very negative light. BBC’s story and documentary titled Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos kicked up a major stir for alleging that the park’s policy has resulted in human rights violations.

To counter the threat of armed poachers, the Assam government has provided immunity to Kaziranga’s forest guards under section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.  

“After viewing BBC’s documentary, we sent a report to the Assam government, and recommended that BBC should be debarred from filming in tiger reserves in the future. The final documentary was entirely different from the subject they had provided while seeking permissions,” said Satyendra Singh, Field Director, Kaziranga Tiger Reserve.

Earlier, NTCA’s notice on February 13 had said that BBC provided a false synopsis on its filming plan with “surreptitious malintent of obtaining permission from relevant authorities”.  

“The producer has used spasmodic events as an umbrella to judge a gamut of conservation efforts that go into safeguarding our wildlife heritage, with scant understanding of the laws in place. The immunity provided to forest officials under Section 197 of the CrPC has been construed as a shoot-to-kill policy,” the NTCA’s show-cause said.  

In his defence, Rowlatt told NTCA on February 14 that there was no attempt to deceive anyone during the filming and that BBC did not refer to the park’s conservation strategy as shoot to kill at any time. He added that as a professional journalist, he was obliged to find out more about the circumstances of the deaths (killing of suspected poachers).

“It quickly became clear that Kaziranga’s policing of poaching is a matter of intense debate both in the communities around the park and within the conservation movement more generally,” said Rowlatt.

Rowlatt also said that despite desiring to reflect the official position on use of armed forces in Kaziranga, Union Environment Minister Anil Dave, Assam Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma, NTCA head BS Bonal and Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest Bikash Brahma did not respond to interview requests. DNA has reviewed a copy of Rowlatt’s response. However, we could not reach Rowlatt for a response as he was travelling.

FACTFILE

• Kaziranga Tiger Reserve in Assam is spread across over 800 sq km and is home to largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros
   
• The reserve has the highest tiger density in the country at 12.72 tigers per 100 sq km, and as per the last tiger estimation carried out by NTCA, it has 103 tigers