National parks in India are IUCN category II protected areas. India's first national park was established in 1936 as Hailey National Park, now known as Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand. By 1970, India only had five national parks. In 1972, India enacted the Wildlife Protection Act and Project Tiger to safeguard the habitats of conservation reliant species.
Further federal legislation strengthening protections for wildlife was introduced in the 1980s. As of July 2015, there were 103 national parks encompassing an area of 40,500 km2 (15,600 sq mi), comprising 1.23% of India's total surface area.
Plans are underway to establish many more national parks in India. All of India's national parks are listed below alongside their home state or territory, area and the date that they were established. See Protected areas of India for an overview of all Indian protected areas.
According to the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests, a national park is "[a]n area, whether within a sanctuary or not, [that] can be notified by the state government to be constituted as a National Park, by reason of its ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological, or zoological association or importance, needed to for the purpose of protecting & propagating or developing wildlife therein or its environment. No human activity is permitted inside the national park except for the ones permitted by the Chief Wildlife Warden of the state under the conditions given in CHAPTER IV, WPA 1972".
List of national parks in India:
Tiger, sloth bear, peacock, elephant, sambar deer, mouse deer