Bolu says he will definitely press the “right” button on April 4. “Rhino poachers should be given the highest kind of punishment. They should be hanged,” said Bolu who, along with his siblings Kanu, Krishna, Kanta and Moniram, owns three stalls by NH-715 — which is technically part of Asian Highway 1 that connects Tokyo to Istanbul. “We run our families selling rhinos. But we are not poachers. These rhinos are products of our hard labour,” Bolu says with pride. Like the Sabar brothers, there are a number of such unemployed youth from villages on Kaziranga’s fringes who eke out a living by carving and selling wooden rhinos and other animals and birds. “There are 40 such stalls, which also employ about 150 more boys, some paid on piece rates, some as daily wagers,” said artisan SubirBaidya. A six-inch wooden rhino sells at Rs 250, from which self-trained youths such as Bolu and Subir earn hardly Rs 50. Kaziranga and several other national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in Assam have lost more than 200 rhinos to poachers since 2001, the year the Congress came to power. “Rhino poaching has increased at such a rate in the past 15 years that the people have got the impression that there is some nexus somewhere. Otherwise, why would poaching go on unabated under the nose of the government?” said AGP president Atul Bora, who is incidentally also the candidate of the BJP-led alliance from Bokakhat, a constituency that covers more than 60 per cent of Kaziranga National Park. “It is very good that the rhino has found a place on the election agenda,” said Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, chair of the IUCN-SSC Asian Rhino Specialist Group, Asian rhino coordinator for the International Rhino Foundation, as well as head of Aaranyak, a Guwahati-based NGO. “In fact, rhino poaching should be on the national agenda because poachers have a link to China, a country that also supplies illegal arms to insurgents and criminal gangs in the Northeast,” Talukdar added. “Political parties should stress capital punishment for poachers.” Former Assam chief wildlife warden M C Malakar said protecting national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, rivers, wetlands, mountains and forests should become issues in the election. “Poaching also has roots in encroachment of forests and wildlife reserves,” said Malakar, also an election candidate — of the Liberal Democratic Party, from Hajo constituency near Guwahati. “Kaziranga has encroachers, and so also do several other national parks in Assam. But are the major parties really talking about it?” Malakar said. The Congress, frequently accused of failing to curb rhino poaching and forest encroachment, has promised to take more steps to prevent poaching.