Bhubaneswar: Conservationists were ecstatic when the Union Ministry of Environment, alarmed by the depleting population of sharks off the country's coast, included all varieties of shark in Schedule One of the Wildlife Protection Act in July 2001. This basically meant that sharks were granted the same degree of security as tigers.

IN FISHERMAN-INFESTED WATERS: Official with seized sharks

But the celebrations proved to be premature. Recently, Indian Forest Service officer Sanjeev Chaddha raided the fishermen's village of Pentakotha on the Orissa coast, recovering a huge number of illegally fished sharks. The raid prompted the powerful lobby of traders in shark products, with an estimated annual turnover of over Rs 200 crore, to petition the ministry, pleading that the ban on shark fishing would deprive many fishermen of their livelihood. The ministry de-notified sharks from Schedule One earlier this month.

"The denotification was dubious and will ring the death knell for sharks," argues Biswajit Mohanty of the Wildlife Society of Orissa. Shark fin, used to make soup that is popular in many countries, is often obtained in a gruesome manner: the fin is sliced off and the shark bleeds to death. From meat to oil, the parts of a shark's body have various uses and a big shark could, on a good day, fetch as much as Rs 30,000. No wonder the shark population has virtually been wiped out in several oceans. They could be putting up their last stand in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, argue conservationists.

Sharks are at the very top of the marine food chain. Their absence will upset the fine balance in the ecosystem much more than the temporary ban on shark fishing has upset the traders.

-Ruben Banerjee

THE GOLDEN PUMPKIN

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)-the incumbent is V.K. Shunglu-is known to push honesty to impractical extremes. That's welcome in a country that tops all global corruption indices. Unless, of course, it's as glaring a goof-up as the CAG-alleged coffin scam is turning out to be. Investigations, individual and official, into CAG's finding that the aluminium caskets contracted to be bought during the Kargil war at $2,500 apiece could have been bought for $172 reveal the speciousness of CAG's information and the shallowness of its investigations.

There is no proof as yet of any casket ever having been bought at $172 in Somalia, as alleged by the CAG. An unknown army commander's vague recollection is all that the CAG quotes as proof, while evidence in black and white shows that the price negotiated by the army as far back as 1997 was around $2,500 per casket. The latest enquiry from Washington puts the price of caskets at $2,768. It also turns out that the $172-casket, if at all it existed, was donated. How does that "charity" square up with Shunglu's uncharitable remarks?

SIGNPOSTS

DIED: Susheela Gopalan, 72, former Kerala minister and wife of legendary Marxist leader A.K. Gopalan.

CANCELLED: The Army Day Parade, scheduled for January 15, as army formations have been deployed along the border.

DROPPED: 5 Chamberlane Road, Lahore, Lashkar-e-Toiba's address in Pakistan, from its official website.

UPGRADED: Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley's security from Y to Z category.

DIED: K.T.K. Thangamani, 86, veteran CPI leader. He was former president of AITUC.

SET UP: A Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into security arrangements in the Parliament complex.

NOMINATED: Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, in the Best Foreign Film category for the Golden Globe Awards.