SC refuses to stay Centre's notice declaring monkeys, nilgai

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to put on hold the Centre’s notifications that declared some animals as vermin allowing them to be culled and asked the petitioner to take up the matter with the government.

An animal rights activist on June 15 asked the court to quash the three notifications that declared nilgai (blue bulls), monkeys and wild boars as vermin in the states of Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, respectively.

The petition also requested the court to immediately put on hold the notifications that pitted two cabinet ministers against each other and has enraged animal rights activists.

“The impugned notifications have been passed in absolute disregard of the human-wildlife conflict plaguing the country and without any scientific survey backing them,” the plea said.

The Centre’s decisions to classify -- on state governments’ request -- the animals as vermin put the spotlight back on conservation challenges in India as incidents of man-animal conflict rise with shrinking wildlife habitats.

Appearing for Gauri Maulekhi, senior advocate Anand Grover had said the Centre didn’t have the power to issue such a notification. He said people were being hired for mass killing of the animals declared vermin.

Starting December 1, the environment ministry issued three



notifications. The most recent was on May 24 for some districts of Himachal Pradesh.

The states had complained they were struggling to pay farmers for crop losses and the growing animal population also posed a risk to human lives.

The vermin tag, the plea said, deprived animals of the shield provided under the wildlife protection act.

“The state is no longer responsible for safeguarding the life and well-being of such animals. The indiscriminate killing of these animals will have a detrimental effect on the food chain and in turn lead to an ecological imbalance,” the plea said.

Arguing for quashing of the Section 62 of the wildlife act, the petitioner said it gave arbitrary power and unfettered discretion to the government. Women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi, too, has spoken out against “indiscriminate” killing of animals. Gandhi held her environment ministry colleague Prakash Javadekar responsible and said she could not understand the “lust for killing animals”.

Javadekar has defended the move, saying the culling was for “scientific management” of rising animal population.

Every year, crops standing in hundreds of acres are destroyed by animals looking for food. Efforts by people to protect their farmland often leads to fatalities on both sides.