India lost 528 elephants due to 'unnatural causes' in 5 yrs: Govt

India lost 528 elephants in the last five years due to unnatural causes, including poaching, poisoning, electrocution, and train accidents, the government informed Parliament on Monday.

In response to a question by BJP MPs Jayanta Kumar Roy and Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo, Union Minister of State for Environment Kirti Vardhan Singh told the Lok Sabha that 392 elephants died from electrocution and 73 were killed in train accidents during this period.

Fifty elephants were killed by poachers and 13 succumbed to poisoning, he said.

According to the government data tabled in the Lok Sabha, 71 elephants died due to electrocution in Odisha, 55 in Assam, 52 in Karnataka, 49 in Tamil Nadu, 32 in Chhattisgarh, 30 in Jharkhand, and 29 in Kerala.

Assam and Odisha recorded 22 and 16 elephant deaths in train accidents. Poachers killed 17 pachyderms in Odisha, 14 in Meghalaya, and 10 in Tamil Nadu. Ten elephants were poisoned in Assam, two in Chhattisgarh, and one in West Bengal.

According to the last elephant census conducted in 2017, India has 29,964 elephants, which is around 60 per cent of their global population.