Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Kaziranga Elevated Corridor Project on 18 January 2026. It involves four-laning of the existing National Highway 715 (also a part of the Asian Highway 1) in Koliabor town of Assam that borders the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR). While the project has been hailed as a wildlife mitigation milestone, local activists and residents have raised an alarm over the impact on wildlife in the national park and livelihood loss due to widening and expansion of the highway.
The newly inaugurated corridors would involve diversion of 20.4 hectares of forest land from the Core Zone of Kaziranga Tiger Reserve and 364.98 hectares from the default Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ) of KNPTR. While the ESZ is yet to be finalised for the park, according to a proposal submitted in February 2024 to National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) chaired by the Prime Minister of India, three stretches of 20 kilometres, 10 kilometres and five kilometres respectively were chosen for elevated sections. The project also includes the four-lane widening of 30.22 km of the existing highway and the construction of 21 km of greenfield bypasses around Jakhalabandha and Bokakhat. The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs approved the widening of 86.675-km stretch of the Highway which will cost Rs 6,950 crore in October 2025.
National Highway 715, a part of the ambitious Asian Highway projects that connects Northeastern India with Southeast Asia via Manipur, is considered as a lifeline to many. It carried around 41,000 vehicles through a 66-kilometre stretch bordering the core area of the KNPTR in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to Wildlife Institute of India’s (WII) projection, the highway could be carrying more than 100,000 vehicles through the eco-sensitive zone of KNPTR. The proposed elevated corridor project is an outcome of a complaint in 2015 by Kaziranga based activist, Rohit Choudhary to the Central Empowered Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India to monitor various violations endangering KNPTR. Choudhary had cited an increasing number of roadkills. From an estimate prepared by National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2019 that recorded 1,176 wildlife roadkills in a year with 49 large mammals, the death toll of animals increased to 6,036 in 2023 including a leopard, based on a Gauhati University study. Both the agencies counted the increasing death tolls during the monsoon season when floodwaters inundated most of the national park.
The Karbi Hills bordering the southern boundary of the KNPTR serves as refuge for animals escaping floodwaters during the monsoon. According to NBWL, there are 11 wildlife corridors through which animals move around the year, particularly during the monsoon. The Committee for Delineation of Wildlife Corridors constituted by the Assam Government estimated a total of 35,488 persons residing in these corridors in 1,088 habitation clusters comprising villages and hamlets.
The plans to construct elevated corridors and bypasses have angered the activists across the state. Pranab Doley, convenor of the Greater Kaziranga Human and Land Rights Protection Committee, an umbrella organisation of 100-odd villages surrounding the park opposed it stating that the project is a threat to fragile ecology and the people of Kaziranga. “Kaziranga, which is at the centre of its conservation with UNESCO and IUCN recognition, needs much more sensitive handling. Large infrastructural push and tourism industry going hand-in-glove will only marginalise biodiversity and the human inhabitants of Kaziranga. The forest department needs much more spine to stand for the truth which they have not and in the process victimised the people and the wildlife of Kaziranga,” Doley told Down To Earth (DTE).
Landowners in Kaziranga are now anxious about the construction of the elevated sections due to which their access to the highway might be blocked or may have to relocate. Based on WII’s findings, NBWL recommended that existing stretches of roads would be decommissioned where elevated sections would be constructed. Residents of 10 villages which includes mostly Karbi and Adivasi villages of Sarmen Singnar, Bachim Singnar, Holiram Engti, Kamson Rongpi, Longtura Rongpi, Krem Kro, Reng Inghon or Dhoni Tora, Badong Ronghang, Jagat Singnar and Haldhibari submitted a memorandum earlier last week before the inauguration of the elevated sections by the Prime Minister. The residents of these villages collectively demanded the proposed one-and-half kilometre stretch of this elevated section should be turned into a ground-level four lane road as it will hinder the access of students to schools, healthcare, trade and cause pollution because of excavation works.
According to Munna Karmakar, who hails from Haldibari tea workers’ line, 70-odd houses may have to relocate. NBWL recommends relocation of the people whose houses fall inside the corridors where elevated sections will be built. Lobongo Chakravorty, a local vendor in Haldibari whose land was acquired during Kaziranga’s expansion two years back, might have to move her shop and her home again. “I submitted a memorandum to the NHAI officials in Guwahati to look into cases of people, whose access to business and movement is threatened by the construction of the flyovers,” Chakravorty told DTE.
Traders from Jakhalabandha, a town in Koliabor sub-division that borders the western boundary of KNPTR, have opposed the bypass, a part of the road widening project. Around 25,000 livelihoods are connected to the 26 roadside eateries that cater to the tourists and freighters going towards Upper Assam, according to Pradip Laskar, an activist from Assam Jatiyabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad, an influential student outfit which has been opposing the bypass for the last three years. As NBWL suggested decommissioning of the existing roads, Laskar says that human-animal conflicts are going to increase in the empty stretches. “We have told the chief minister that widening of the highway should happen in the existing stretch itself in Jakhalabandha. We have formed a committee of 11 persons from the town after meeting the chief minister to suggest measures for widening the existing stretch,” Laskar told DTE.
On the other hand, Ellora Vigyan Mancha, a non-profit, questioned the rationale behind construction of the elevated sections in Kaziranga in a press statement. “We demand that all impact studies must be conducted before the construction of the said elevated corridor. The wild animals from Kaziranga go back and forth from the National Highway to the Karbi Hills every day and in large numbers from the plains of Kaziranga during the monsoon when the park is flooded. It is stated that the construction work will take at least four to five years and as a result of this construction, the animal corridors will remain blocked. How will the project developers and authorities ensure the movement of the animals during this phase?” asked Bhupen Sarmah, a member of Ellora Vigyan Mancha.
Ahead of the inauguration by PM Modi, Prashanta Saikia, a lawyer from Koliabor, shot off a letter in November 2025 to UNESCO which considers Kaziranga as one of the World Heritage Sites. “Unlike humans, animals do not understand speed limits when they are fleeing from the floods during the monsoon. The construction on the animal corridors might bring down the road kills but it will increase the deaths on the corridors,” Saikia told DTE. Saikia said the ecosystem is already saturated by fragmentation of the forest cover which shows a marked increase of the degraded forest cover in the national park from 7.8 square kilometres in 2002 to 183.3 square kilometres to 2013 due to anthropogenic activities, including construction of roads, tourism infrastructure, etc.
Former member of Assam State Board of Wildlife and environmental journalist, Mubina Akhtar said the National Green Tribunal had recognised the issue of highways posing a threat to wildlife in 2008 and ordered the construction of an alternative for heavy traffic heading towards Upper Assam. “In 2015, the State Board of Wildlife passed a proposal to construct a bridge connecting Gohpur on the north bank of the Brahmaputra with Numaligarh on the south bank, which lies upstream of the KNPTR. The traffic coming towards Upper and Eastern Assam could be diverted at Koliabor in Nagaon, leaving Kaziranga with manageable traffic and less impact on the wildlife,” Akhtar told DTE. Akhtar, who heads Kaziranga Wildlife Society, one of the oldest conservation organisations in the region, said the proposal was shelved after the Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power.
Later, the Assam government proposed an underwater tunnel through the Brahmaputra between Gohpur and Numaligarh, according to senior journalist Apurva Ballav Goswami. “The solution lies in finding an alternative route to minimise the impact on wildlife which could have been possible by building a bridge between Gohpur and Numaligarh. However, the present elevated section and road expansion will only increase the sufferings of wild animals and humans who live with them,” Goswami told DTE.