India News | Wildlife Protection: TN Makes Prior Permission Mandatory to Install Electric Fences

Chennai, Jul 4 (PTI) In order to protect wildlife and safeguard farm produce, obtaining prior permission from authorities is now mandatory to put up electric fences, the Tamil Nadu government said on Tuesday.

In a first of its kind initiative, the government said it has notified the Tamil Nadu Power Fences (Registration and Regulation) Rules 2023. On July 3, 2023, the rules have been notified.

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"This would standardise and regulate erection of power fences and for registration of already erected power fences around farm lands," an official release said.

The TN government is deeply committed to protect wildlife in the state. There have been instances of wild animals especially elephants getting electrocuted due to high voltage electric fences.

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"In order to protect wildlife it has become essential to bring in place a set of regulations to strandardise parameters for putting up power fences. At the same time, it is absolutely essential to safeguard agricultural produce of farmers being destroyed by wildlife in areas adjoining forests. Standardised regulations would also help farmers protect their crop," the government said.

The new rules make it mandatory to seek prior permission to erect power fences including solar power fences. It also has become mandatory to register already erected power fences.

These rules shall be applicable only within 5 km from the notified reserve forest areas in Tamil Nadu. All companies in the business of erecting power fences are now mandated to comply with BIS standard viz., BIS-302-2-76 (India) norms.

It is compulsory for those who have already erected power fences within 5 km from notified reserve forest areas to get their fences registered with the jurisdictional District Forest Officer (DFO).

In order to ensure compliance of new norms, a joint team of officials from government-run electricity corporation and forest department would take up field level inspections once in a fortnight and they shall record relevant information in a log book. TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation) is the State-run power corporation.

The DFOs, along with TANGEDCO officials, after the inspection and verification exercise, shall consider applications within 45 days for 'approval, reduction or rejection.'

Those with existing power fences shall apply within sixty days 'from the date of publication of these rules' to the DFO for obtaining registration certificate.

On receipt of permission, the owner of the property may erect the power fence within ninety days from the date of permission and apply for registration of power fence along with an 'undertaking form.'

The quality of erected power fences shall be reviewed once in three years for providing fitness certificates, after joint site inspections by Forest and Electricity officials.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)