New Delhi: Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi on Thursday trained guns at her cabinet colleague Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and said the latter’s ministry is frivolously granting permission to kill innocent animals.
On the reports of large number of deer being killed in Patna in Bihar, Gandhi said that she does not understand this ‘lust’ to kill.
“The Environment Ministry here is writing to every state asking them which animal they want to kill and they will grant permission. In Bengal they gave permission to kill elephants, in Himachal they gave permission to kill monkeys, in Goa they gave permission to kill peacocks,” said Gandhi.
“In Chandrapur where the condition is so adverse that they have already killed 53 wild boars and permission to kill 50 more has been given. Environment Ministries own wildlife department said that they don’t want to kill animals and should not be pressurised for the same. I don’t understand this lust for killing,” she added.
Gandhi further castigated the killing of animals across the nation and said, that it is matter of shame that none of the locals want to kill deer, so to complete the task the environment ministry had to hire shooters from a different state.
“The shooters hail from a family which comes from Hyderabad and they roam around the nation and kill animals. Such incident has taken place first time in Bihar. Such a massacre has never taken place, where Deers which is a protected animal in huge numbers have been killed,” said Gandhi.
“The point which should be noted is that no one from Bihar, no head of any village or any farmer asked for the killing. And it is a matter of shame that they had to get shooters from Hyderabad to kill animals,” she added.
Minister of State for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar on Thursday countered his Cabinet colleague Maneka Gandhi’s charges that the Environment Ministry thrived in the killing of innocent animals and asserted that such decisions were taken keeping scientific facts in mind to help those affected by such animals.
“I will not react on who said what. But as per the law, we must help the farmers whose crops get ruined. The state government sends us a proposal and only then we initiate a step for a specific region and for a specific period of time keeping the scientific facts in mind,” he told the media here.
Defending the Centre, Javadekar stated that taking such a decision was not the Centre’s prerogative, adding the Environment Ministry acted as per the law.
According to reports, the Union government recently declared monkeys as ‘vermin and cleared the decks for their large-scale extermination in Shimla Meanwhile in Goa, a call was made to cull India’s national bird peacock citing the reason that the bird is creating a problem for farmers and are destroying their cultivation in rural areas.
Similarly, in Maharashtra the local forest department culled a whooping 300 animals in the past few months after several farmers reported huge losses due to crop raids.
ANI