VIP Hunters Get Licence To Kill In Punjab

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Link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main17.asp?

filename=ts042206VIP_hunters.asp

 

VIP Hunters Get Licence To Kill In Punjab

 

The decision of the Wildlife Advisory Board of Punjab, headed by

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, to give permits to hunters to cull

wild animals that threaten crops has raised the hackles of

conservationists and the Bishnoi community. Vikram Jit Singh reports

 

In its final year in power in Punjab, the Amarinder Singh regime has

succumbed to a lobby of poachers and the pressures of populism. The

government has declared an open hunting season under the garb of

protecting crops from marauding wild boars and nilgais. Not only

have conservation norms been thrown to the winds with regard to the

targeted animals but the risk of vvip hunters massacring other

endangered species like the barking deer and hog deer are all too

real. Dumping scientific strategies to tackle the wild animal

menace, the Punjab government resorted to a crude method, to please

the lobby of poachers and feudal elements swarming around the ruling

power coterie.

 

That the Punjab government's approach has been inspired by malafides

is established by the brazen manner in which the commitments made on

record in the meeting of the state's Wildlife Advisory Board by

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh against open hunting have now been

overruled by Amarinder himself. In-depth investigations by Tehelka

establish that the board's working has proved to be a smokescreen.

In it's one and only meeting held during the Congress rule on April

27, 2005, the newly-constituted board went on record to declare that

shooting of wild boars in the Shivalik ranges area wouldn't be

permitted as hunting permits could be misused.

 

Apr 22 , 2006

 

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