KUMARHATTI: Criticizing the Congress government for defunct agriculture policy in state, Mr. Jagdish Bhardwaj a HP state secretariat member of CPI has said that in the lack of effective policy the animals’ menace has gained alarming proportion.
Talking to this correspondent here today, Mr. Bhardwaj has said that in 1996 he had submitted a memorandum to the then central forestry ministry led by Prof Saifudeen Soz .It was pleaded than to kill the animals particularly the monkey in order to save the crop, he said . Acting on the memorandum the ministry had allowed culling the animal responsible for major losses to crop, he asserted. Ironically these arrangements were not implemented in HP, he pointed out.
Moreover decision to ban the export of monkeys to European countries in 1978 had not only cost central government the major revenue but helped to swallow the monkey population manifold, he said. Had the ban on export not forced the large population of monkeys would not become a major threat to agriculture in state, he maintained.
Each monkey was exported at whopping amount of Rs. 5-lakh thanks to its 70-percent feature resemblance with human, he said. The Janta Party had banned the export terming it against country religious values, he remarked.
The animals’ problem has emerged as challenge now, he said adding there was an urgent need to either sterilise them or to kill them.
