NGT stays Assam’s order to deploy 1,600 forest guards for election duty — with Kaziranga’s rhinos in the balance

In a development that cuts right across the intersection of electoral politics and wildlife protection, the Eastern Zone bench of the National Green Tribunal today stayed an order by the Assam government that would have deployed around 1,600 Assam Forest Protection Force (AFPF) personnel for poll duty ahead of the state’s April 9 assembly elections.

The NGT bench was blunt about the urgency. According to a report in NE News, it noted: “If we don’t ask the state government to withdraw the order, it will be a fait accompli because tomorrow is the last date for their deployment. We have to stay it, otherwise it will set a bad precedent.” A full hearing has been scheduled for April 6.

The order at the centre of the dispute was issued on March 19 by Mahandra Kumar Yadava, Assam’s special chief secretary for environment, forest and climate change. It directed AFPF personnel to report to the state’s Additional Director General of Police by April 3 — today — and return to forest duties by April 10, the day after polling. The AFPF, formed in 1986, is the backbone of on-the-ground forest enforcement in Assam: it handles anti-poaching operations, prevents illegal logging, and maintains vigilance against encroachment across some of the most ecologically sensitive terrain in the country.

The outcry from the conservation community was swift and forceful. According to a report in NE Now, a group of 40 former civil servants — drawn from the IAS, IPS and IFS — signed an open letter to Chief Secretary Ravi Kota calling the order illegal and demanding its immediate withdrawal. The signatories included former Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, former Environment Ministry Secretary Meena Gupta, and prominent wildlife expert Prerna Singh Bindra. Their letter pointed to Election Commission of India guidelines that explicitly prohibit the requisitioning of territorial forest forces for poll duties, and to a 2024 Supreme Court order that had further exempted forest personnel and vehicles from such deployment. “Any dilution in field presence at this stage could leave vulnerable species exposed to organised wildlife crime,” the group warned.

What makes the stakes particularly concrete is Kaziranga. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is home to the world’s largest population of greater one-horned rhinoceros, and its protection depends on continuous, intensive patrolling. As recently as February, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had publicly celebrated the fact that not a single rhino had been poached in Assam in all of 2025 — 730 consecutive days without a poaching incident, according to the Sentinel Assam. Conservationists now argue that this hard-won record is precisely what an understaffed fortnight could undo. Beyond the rhino, Assam’s forests are habitat for the hoolock gibbon, the golden langur and the critically endangered pygmy hog, all of which depend on the same network of forest protection.

The Assam government has not publicly responded to the NGT stay. The AFPF personnel, who were required to report today, now await the April 6 hearing. What the tribunal decides then — and how the state responds — will be watched closely by conservationists across the country. The case raises a question that goes beyond Assam: at what point does the administrative machinery of democratic elections become a threat to the ecological infrastructure that the same state is obliged to protect?

This is a developing story. IWN will follow the April 6 NGT hearing.

Sources: NE News · The Federal · NE Now · The Print · Sentinel Assam

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