Ms. Maneka said the Union Environment Ministry “is writing to every state government, allowing them to provide a list of animals that can be killed so that the Centre can give permission”.
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Two ministers of the Narendra Modi government are at loggerheads over the proposal to sanction the killing of animals belonging to the endangered species.
Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has responded saying if the state asks the ministry, it permits the culling of animals to protect crops.
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi today slammed the Environment Ministry for allowing culling of wild animals, saying she can not understand this “lust” for killing, but Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar defended the action insisting it is done on request of states to protect crops. In Himachal, they gave permission to kill monkeys.
“As soon as we get states” response on this, we will give them permission to declare such animals as “vermin’ for a limited period of time”, he said.
According to environment ministry sources, killing of animals took place under scientific procedure.
Union Minister for Women & Child Development and on Thursday raised a storm when she accused the Environment Ministry of harbouring a “lust for killing animals”.
Gandhi said that the local residents did not want to kill deer, so “to complete the task the environment ministry had to hire shooters from a different state”. “Killing animals is not a solution”, Peta official Nikunj Sharma said. “The human-animal conflict is rising”. Instead of ordering the animals to be killed, animal land should not be encroached upon and if not possible, should relocate them. “For the first time, a massacre of this scale has been allowed”.
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He clarified that the ministry acts on the recommendation of state governments based on an old law and it is not unprecedented to grant such permissions. Javadekar called is a “scientific management” while talking to NDTV. Earlier, too, she had exerted pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership to sack the party MLA who was allegedly involved in the attack on Uttarakhand Police Horse Shaktimaan.
