Panther enters Ooty LS poll counting centre premises

Ooty: A wild panther strayed into the high security counting centre premises here in Ooty, giving man-animal conflict a new dimension.

While poll officials chose to be tight-lipped about this, reliable forest department sources said that footage taken from surveillance cameras installed in and around the Government Polytechnic here, the counting centre for the Nilgiris (SC) LS constituency where the polled EVMs are stored in the strong room, showed the movement of a panther in the campus on Tuesday night.

Sources added that the panther movement was observed in the rear end of the Government Polytechnic, a few meters away from the strong room building. Footage showed a panther crossing the premises from one corner to the other and vanishing into the bushes  nearby. “Since the New Aramby reserve forest is located a few meters away from the Government Polytechnic, it is believed that the panther which strayed from the jungles there entered the polytechnic campus and moved to the other side,” sources maintained and added that foresters have been told to take preventive steps.