Blue bull menace to figure in planning panel meet
STATE to seek NAIS cover to losses caused by the animal
LUCKNOW: The blue bull menace is likely to figure prominently when the planning commission holds its meeting in Delhi on July 18.
The state’s agriculture department has decided to take up the issue with the planning panel and demand coverage of damages caused to farmers’ crops by the animal under the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS).
“We will be giving presentation on the blue bull menace before the planning commission that has called various departments’ meeting to finalise the plan outlay on July 18,” principal secretary, agriculture, Devashish Panda told Hindustan Times adding, “We will demand that the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme be extended to cover the damages to farmers’ field crops by blue bulls.”.
Panda said blue bulls caused extensive loss to the crops, adversely affecting the productivity in the state. But the NAIS at presentdid not cover the losses. We will impress upon the planning commission the fact that farmers would be ready to take risk of growing crops like pulses and oilseeds that attracted blue bulls if they are compensated for the losses,” he pointed out.
Blue bull has emerged as one of the biggest problems being faced by the farmers all over the state. As per the census by the forest department in 2010, there are 22,33,605 blue bulls in the state with their largest concentration in districts such as Fatehpur, Varanasi, Orai, Budaun, Shahjhanpur, Moradabad, JP Nagar, Bijnor, Mathura, Mainpuri, Etah, and Unnao,
“But their population must been much more by now since this is a fast-proliferating animal,” said a forest department department.
Explaining how the animal was causing harm to the agriculture in the state, additional agriculture director, RR Singh said blue bulls usually came in hordes, walked over fields and ruined the entire crops within no time. “They mainly damage pulses to the extent that farmers in many regions have stopped growing them contributing to the shortage,” he said.
It has been noticed that farmers hesitated in killing blue bulls even if the law permitted their elimination with certain conditions. Because of religious reasons they equated blue bull, also called neelgai, with the cow. For this reason only, the government had recently renamed the neelgai as ‘van roj’, clarifying that this animal came from the antelope family having nothing to do with the cow family.
“But the permissible procedure for killing blue bulls is still quite complicated and not many people are ready to shoot them for this reason only,” said an official adding, “Much of the problem can be solved if the Centre agrees to extend to NAIS to cover the loss done to crops.”