New Delhi: Another translocated cheetah (named ‘Uday’) has died in the Kuno National Park of Madhya Pradesh. This is the second death among the group of 20 cheetahs which the government of India brought recently from Namibia and South Africa.A post-mortem is to be conducted to determine the exact cause of the cheetah’s death. Madhya Pradesh’s chief conservator of forests, JS Chauhan said in a statement, “Another cheetah, Uday, who was brought from South Africa, has died during treatment after falling ill at Kuno National Park. Reason for death is yet to be ascertained,”PTI reports that the cheetah was observed to be unwell since Sunday morning, and after continuous monitoring, forest officials decided to tranquillise the animal and treat it. It was brought to the isolation ward for further treatment and observation, but died during treatment at around 4:00 PM.Earlier, less than a month ago, Namibian cheetah Sasha died due to a kidney ailment on March 27.In February, the government brought 12 cheetahs from South Africa, the second bunch of translocations after eight cheetahs were brought from Namibia last September. The 20 cheetahs were all released in the Kuno National Park.Though the controversial plan of bringing the animals from southern Africa had been in the works for over a decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned this into a personal project of sorts and, on the occasion of his 72nd birthday in September, had released eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia into a special enclosure at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. He had then said, “Cheetahs have come back to our land after decades. On this historic day, I want to congratulate all Indians and also thank the government of Namibia. This could not have been possible without their help”.Cheetahs were again in the news as just days ago, Modi had renamed the animals after a competition held for the purpose. The RSS-promoted magazine ‘Organiser’ writes that “from September 26 to October 31, 2022, a competition was held on the Government of India platform mygov.in. As per the official statement made on April 20, a total of 11,565 entries were received. The cheetahs will now be called Aasha, Pavan, Nabha, Jwala, Gaurav, Shaurya, Dhatri, Daksha, Nirva, Vayu, Agni, Gamini, Tejas, Veera, Suraj, Dheera, Uday, Prabhas and Pavak.”Earlier this week, there were reports that scientists of the Cheetah Research Project of Leibniz-IZW in Namibia has expressed concern about the size and appropriateness of Kuno National Park. In a letter in the journal Conservation Science and Practice last week, they had argued that in southern Africa, “cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities of less than one individual per 100 square kilometres (km²),” which is not the case in Kuno.