Kaziranga wildlife corridor notification removed from Assam govt site: Is Reliance’s Methoni Tea Estate set to benefit?

Guwahati: The Assam government has taken down a 2022 Gazette notification identifying nine wildlife corridors linking Kaziranga National Park to the Karbi Anglong hills, days after Northeast Now and other media outlets reported that details of the Panbari corridor were missing from it.

The Environment, Forest and Climate Change Department’s webpage that previously hosted the notification now returns a “404 Page Not Found” error.

Issued on April 1, 2022, under notification No. FRW.7/2022/Pt.V/01 and titled “9 (nine) animal corridors connecting Karbi Anglong Hills and Kaziranga National Park,” the document followed the recommendations of a government-appointed committee. Constituted on May 4, 2019, to identify and delineate animal corridors between Kaziranga and Karbi Anglong, the committee submitted its report on August 28, 2019, naming nine corridors: Panbari, Haldhibari, Bagori, Harmati, Kanchanjuri, Hatidandi, Deosur, Chirang and Amguri.

Also read: Kaziranga’s Panbari wildlife corridor missing from Assam govt record; Methoni Tea Estate in focus

While the notification’s opening section referred to all nine corridors, the version that was publicly available online contained detailed descriptions and maps for only eight — Panbari was conspicuously absent. That discrepancy drew media scrutiny, given Panbari’s importance as a wildlife passage between the park and the hills.

Notification pulled after reports

The webpage has now been taken down entirely, replacing the missing-Panbari discrepancy with a new one: no notification at all. The government has not explained why the page was removed, whether the notification is being corrected or revised, or whether the underlying Gazette notification itself has been withdrawn.

A conflicting official record

Complicating the picture, a document from the Eastern Assam Wildlife Division referred to a “notified Panbari Animal Corridor” in 2022, in connection with a proposal for an APDCL substation at Methoni Tea Estate. The Divisional Forest Officer noted that the proposed site fell outside the notified Panbari corridor — treating Panbari as formally notified even though its details were missing from the public version of the nine-corridor notification.

That leaves an unresolved question: if forest officials themselves treated Panbari as notified, why were its details absent from the public notification, and why has the document since disappeared from the department’s website?

Meanwhile, the office of the Field Director, Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, has reportedly clarified that Panbari is part of the nine wildlife corridors notified under the April 1, 2022 government notification. It said the notification was published in the Gazette and is available for public access on the official Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve website.

The Methoni Tea Estate connection

The Panbari corridor’s disappearance from the record has drawn added attention because of its association with Methoni Tea Estate, which changed hands in 2022 — the same year the corridor notification was issued. The estate came under RCP Solutions and Services Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited.

It is important to be clear about what is and isn’t established here: there is no documentary evidence that the government removed or altered the notification because of the tea estate’s ownership. The timing invites scrutiny, but any direct link between the two remains unproven absent further disclosure from the government or official records.

Northeast Now emailed M K Yadava, Special Chief Secretary of the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Department on the removal. No response had been received at the time of publication. The story will be updated if a response is received.

Why it matters

Wildlife corridors are critical to seasonal animal movement between Kaziranga and the Karbi Anglong hills, especially during monsoon floods that submerge large parts of the park. A formally issued Gazette notification naming nine such corridors is now unavailable to the public, with one corridor’s status disputed and no official clarification offered.

Until the Assam government responds, three questions remain open: why Panbari was missing from the 2022 notification despite being named among the nine corridors; why the notification has now been removed from the department’s website; and whether the state will publish a corrected, complete record of all nine corridors.