Maneka slams environment ministry for allowing states to kill elephants, boars
NEW DELHI: Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi on Thursday has slammed the environment ministry for allowing the state governments to kill animals they consider “nuisance”.
“The Union environment ministry is now writing to all the states asking them to list ‘nuisance’ animals so that it can grant permission to kill these animals. This is happening for the first time,” said Gandhi.
The West Bengal government has sought permission to kill elephants; Himachal Pradesh wants to kill monkeys while the Goa government wants a go-ahead to cull peacocks, added the minister.
“Over 50 wild boars have been killed in drought-hit Chandrapur (Maharashtra) and the union ministry has allowed killing more while the state environment department is not in favour of this act. I can’t understand this lust for killing animals,” said Gandhi.
Last year, the ministry of environment and forest agreed in-principle to allow hunting of wild animals in man-animal conflict zones. “In areas where farmers are facing huge problems due to animals, there is a procedure to declare them as ‘vermin’ like blue bull and wild boar for a particular period of time. We will give them (states) permission to declare such animals as vermin,” environment minister Prakash Javadekar had said.
The law to allow such killing is an old one, said Javadekar in reply to Gandhi’s criticism. “When state governments write to us about farmers suffering due to crop damage by animals, such permissions are given,” he said.
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