ENDANGERED: Annually 500 cats are lost

Almost three decades after Project Tiger was initiated by Indira Gandhi in 1973, T.R. Baalu has turned saviour of the equally endangered leopard. The Union forest minister wants to start a project on the lines of Project Tiger to conserve the leopard's habitat and combat poaching.

S.C. Sharma, additional director-general, wildlife, Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) says the state forest departments will first report the leopard crises in their states and handle the project in tandem with the Centre.

But murmurs of protest are being heard in the MOEF corridors. Officers complain about the difficulty of handling fragmented projects. Yet statistics show the need for such a project: 7,000 leopards exist in India, and about 500 are annually lost to poachers.

-Prerna Singh Bindra

Peeved Police

Uttar Pradesh is a land of long memories and longer feuds. Even so, there are two perennial rivalries in this benighted land that take precedence over all others. First, Brahmin versus Thakur. Second IAS versus IPS. The turf battle between the administrative and police services, it can be happily reported, has reached hitherto unimaginable depths and now extends to security passes.

It all began on December 13 and the attack on Parliament. Deciding they were mighty threatened, the residents of the state secretariat in Lucknow barricaded themselves and decided only those with special passes would be allowed in. IAS officers were freely issued passes, IPS officers weren't. When the chaps in uniform protested, they were given passes but their vehicles weren't. So the policemen had to walk.

IPS officers are already upset that, contravening Supreme Court orders, IAS officers write their annual confidential reports. Now things have come to this pass. Tch Tch.

-Subhash Mishra

Foul Play

LOSING STEAM: Dhillon

The recent U and I hockey tournament in Bangalore saw much action off the field. Punjab Police's Baljit Singh Dhillon threw a hockey stick at the crowd and coach Pargat Singh's bodyguard brandished his gun at the restive crowd. It happened courtesy an April 14 game that the Punjab team tanked, losing 0-3 to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).

It was an elaborate strategy to avoid formidable Indian Airlines in the semi-final. It seemed to work when Punjab Police reached the final and defeated, voila, IOC 6-0. It must be hockey's version of the encounter death.

-Stephen David

KONDAPALLI SEETARAMAIAH 1915-2002

Known as KS to his communist comrades, Kondapalli Seetaramaiah Reddy was a primary school Hindi teacher-turned-Naxalite. Inspired by CPI(ML) founder Charu Mazumdar's philosophy of power through the gun, he first courted arrest in 1977. In 1980 he co-founded the breakaway militant People's War Group (PWG) and also launched the party magazine, Pilupu.

KS was a most wanted man until his arrest in 1982. But he pulled off a sensational escape from a government hospital in Hyderabad in January 1984. As the police hunted for him, he became a legend championing the cause of the poor in the Telengana countryside. He drew many jobless rural youth to the PWG ranks and trained them in using arms as he chased his utopian dream of an armed revolution against the state.

In 1992 even as the government slapped a ban on the PWG, the second rung leadership ousted KS on grounds of senility. He was a fugitive until his arrest in 1993. In 1996 the NTR government set the sick septuagenarian free. The cases against him could not be proved and the self-styled revolutionary lived a recluse until his death on April 12.

-Amarnath K. Menon