Nagpur: The Bombay High Court has ordered the Maharashtra government to compensate a farmer for pomegranate trees damaged by parrots, ruling that the birds are “wild animals” under the Wildlife Act and the state must compensate citizens for losses caused by their properties.
A Nagpur bench of Justices Urmila Joshi-Phalke and Nivedita Mehta noted that if farmers are not compensated for losses caused by protected species, they may resort to measures that harm wildlife, which would go against the very purpose of the law, which explicitly covers parrots.
A copy of the April 24 order was made available on Sunday.
The court passed the order on a petition filed by Mahadeo Dikati, a farmer from Hinji village in Wardha district, who claimed that his pomegranate trees were damaged by wild parrots from a nearby wildlife sanctuary in May 2016, and sought compensation for the same.
The court ordered the government to pay $200 per tree as compensation for damage to 200 trees.
The state government opposed the petition, claiming that government decisions in the past stipulated that compensation could only be granted when wild elephants and bison damage fruit trees.
But the court refused to accept this claim, noting that the aim of issuing such decisions is to compensate the affected farmers for the losses they suffered.
“When such an objective is explained, it does not make sense to consider the loss caused by a few species of wild animals and ignore the loss caused by other species of wild animals for the purpose of paying compensation,” the decision said.
The court held that a person entitled to compensation under the statutory provisions cannot be deprived simply because some types are not included in the government decisions.
The court observed that “there is no logical basis for holding that only damage caused by certain species entitles farmers to compensation,” stating that this would be a violation of the principle of equality and a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution.
It considered that the Wildlife Act, as a legislative law, would prevail over any government decisions.
She stated that according to the provisions of the 1972 law, wild animals are considered the property of the state, and there is no dispute that the parrot is one of them.
“Hence, the law expects every citizen to be the protector of wild animals and, therefore, they cannot be expected to suffer the loss caused to them by wild animals,” the HC said.
Otherwise, the primary purpose of protecting wild animals will be frustrated and affected people may resort to their own defenses to save their crops and fruit trees, which may harm wild animals.
According to the confession, Dikati made complaints to officials from the local forestry and agriculture departments, who visited his orchard and noted that about 50 percent of the fruits were damaged by birds.
But officials expressed their inability to pay compensation, because there is no provision in government decisions for the damage caused by birds such as parrots.
The government opposed Dikati’s petition, claiming that birds such as parrots are not classified as wild animals.
The petitioner relied on the provisions of the Wildlife Law, which stipulate that a wild animal is any animal found wild in nature, and the list of animals mentioned in the law also includes the Alexandrian parrot and other parrot species.
In his plea, Decati said he suffered a loss of approx $20 lakh.
The Supreme Court accepted this claim, noting that the schedule under the law included parrots.
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