SC directives were ignored by UP govt?

LUCKNOW: Illegal slaughterhouses may be facing the heat now, but the issue has been under the scanner of Supreme Court for quite some time now. On August 27, 2013, the apex court spelt out a broader framework directing formation of a state-level committee to ensure their periodical supervision or inspection. The court directives were observed more in breach than in practice by the UP government.

And nothing illustrates this self-induced inertia of the authorities better than the flourishing business being done by an illegal slaughterhouse in Motijheel locality of Lucknow right under the nose of municipal authorities.

Residents of the locality had to move the high court here and obtain a decree for its closure (Motijheel slaughterhouse) on March 11, 2015 to get the official machinery to do its job.

After the SC ruling, the state government did nothing to ensure its on-ground implementation except for issuing a customary government order in 2014 seeking setting up of district level committees as envisaged in the apex court directives.

The same set of rules and crackdown on the functioning of illegal slaughterhouses find a reiteration in the order passed by chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar on March 22, 2017.

“The only difference is of the priority accorded to the subject matter by the incumbent regime. The bureaucracy functions like that,” said a senior official associated with the case. Some of the licenced slaughterhouses are also not following various provisions as well as the guidelines issued by the MoEF, he admitted.

The apex court had suggested state governments to nominate a retired district judge for a period of two years as a convener of the state-level monitoring committee. But no such panels either on state or district level were constituted by the government.