Villagers are fleeing to safety as elephants move into their domain in search of food and fodder---------- Kandhmal is back in the news - but this time around it is not communal riots. The district which caught inter- national attention last year with the killing of VHP leader Swami Laxmanand Saraswati and the ensuing communal violence is currently in the grip of a jumbo menace which has forced the administration to open relief camps. This is the first time that such camps are being organized for people driven out of their villages, by elephant herds on the rampage. Kandhmal collector Kishan Kumar said around 150 families from four pan-chayats were taking shelter in two camps which had to be opened because people were too scared to live in their villages. "The herd has killed eight people so far. Daringbadi and K Nuagaon are the worst affected blocks," said Kumar adding that efforts were on to drive back the elephants to the Lakhari sanctuary in the neighbouring Gajpati district from where it strayed into Kandhmal. The divisional forest officer, Baliguda in Kandhmal, Ramesh Sethi admitted this was the first time the district was witnessing this problem. "What is even more surprising is the fact that the 12-strong herd has stayed in the district for over six months," he said, adding that while five special squads have been pressed into service to drive back the herd, people inhabiting villages close to forests are being advised to hide their paddy underground and destroy the mahua-based liquor stocks as they constitute a big attraction for the pachyderms. Such is the magnitude of the crisis that the government was forced to send special teams of wildlife officials from Bhubaneswar to bring the herd under control. A special round-the-clock control room has been opened at Simanbadi, one of the worst affected panchayats to continuously track the herd and monitor its movements. The herd has also destroyed over 500 houses forcing the administration to offer people house construction subsidy under the government's new Mo Kudia scheme which is being extended to the elephant menace-hit people for the first time. However, far from satisfied, the locals are protesting against the alleged government apathy to their plight under the banner of Hati Upadraba Kriyanusthan Committee. The advisor of the committee, Bhal Chandra Sarangi said, "Forest officials are just not, capable of handling this crisis. Members of the team that came from Bhubaneswar were afraid of even getting down from their vehicle. How can we expect them to save people?" The crisis is being blamed on the encroachment of forests by the people who have constructed mud houses right inside elephant habitats. "When you encroach the space meant for the pachyderms, they are bound to stray and attack you. Besides, we also need to contain-other kinds of human activity including industrial activity inside the forests," said Sethi, DFO, Baliguda. Eminent environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty said the herd had stayed put in Kandhmal for such a long time because its migratory route to Kalahandi forests through Niyamgiri has been blocked by industrial activity at Lanjigarh where the Vedanta group has set up a huge alumina refinery. "With so much of activity going on in that area where hundreds of trucks ply daily, the elephants just cannot cross over to the Karlapat forests in Kalahandi. The crisis is of our making," added Mohanty. While the crisis in Kandhmal continues, elephants have also been on rampage in several other parts of the state. This is a sad reflection on the government which sometime ago came up with a special Rs 53 crore elephant management plan which has apparently failed to take off.