It's scrutiny time for the tiger sanctuaries in the country, including Bihar's own Valmiki Tiger Reserve.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has constituted five teams to evaluate management effectiveness of India's 43 reserves for its national animal, an exercise that is carried out every four years.

"The teams have been asked to submit their report latest by March 2018 after which the necessary analysis of the reports would be done and final reports would be published accordingly by the end of 2018," NTCA member secretary Debabrat Swain said over the phone from Delhi.

R.N. Mehrotra, a retired principal chief conservator of forest in Rajasthan, will head the team that will assess how well Valmiki Tiger Reserve is being managed. V. Jospeh of the World Wildlife Fund-India and Manoj Nair of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, will be the other two members. NTCA deputy inspector-general Nishant Verma will be the convener of the team.

Valmiki had upped its performance from "satisfactory" in 2010 to "very good" in 2014.

The NTCA had organised an orientation workshop in Delhi on April 28 this year in which members of the management effectiveness evaluation teams were briefed about the work to be done and the kind of supporting documents they should seek from the tiger reserve officials.

"We are busy preparing the documents which are scrutinised during the evaluation," said Valmiki Tiger Sereve director S. Chandrasekhar. "We will also urge the team to visit the field so that they can crosscheck the reports submitted by us by collecting first-hand information from the ground."