M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Mar 9: “If bulls and vagabond cattle became a poll issue in the recently concluded Vidhan Sabha election in UP, days are not any far off when the menace of the blue bulls (Nilgai) will be a poll agenda in the Vidhan Sabha election in Jharkhand due in the year 2024,” said the lone NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) MLA Kamlesh Kumar Singh in Jharkhand.
The NCP MLA said, “Nilgai ki samasya bhaiyawah hai. Kissan trast hai (The problem of blue bulls is horrific. Farmers are stricken by them.”
He said the menace of the blue bull is rampant in Hussainabad, the constituency which he represents. There is not a single village left here where the blue bulls have not caused a trail of miseries and destruction for the farmers.
The NCP MLA further said that it will be fatuous to assume that the problem of bluebells is just confined to Hussainabad. It is almost in the entire length and breadth of Palamu.
The farmers and the vegetable growers of Chainpur, Bishrampur, Pandu, Paton, Manatu etc all are at the receiving end of the terror of the bluebulls.
“Palamu is already a drought-prone district and farmers have their problems like inadequate irrigation facilities, the crisis of fertilizer, unseasonal rain and hailstones. Now this invasion of the blue bulls in the fields having standing crops, has forced the farmers to abandon their agricultural activities,” added Kamlesh Kumar Singh.
“There are many farmers who have taken agricultural loans for tractors, thrashers, tillers but due to attacks of the blue bulls, these farmers are facing the acute problem of repayment of the bank loans,” informed the NCP MLA.
Hordes of blue bulls attack standing crops and vegetables at night. Farmers and growers can’t do anything to ward them off.
Blue bulls come under schedule 3 of the Wildlife Protection Act and hence, have immunity from public assault, no matter what losses they cause to them.
Singh said that farmers are helpless. The local forest personnel do nothing. The district forest department shows extreme indifference and apathy towards this problem.
“As our Chief Minister Hemant Soren holds the portfolio of the forest, environment and climate change department, we look forward to him taking immediate steps to provide relief to the farmers and the vegetable growers,” the MLA said.
The NCP MLA said he has exercised the power under rule 34 (6) as enshrined in the business of the Vidhan Sabha Jharkhand and has placed his ‘starred question.’
This question asks the state government to explain if it finds blue bull as a menace in Jharkhand, has it adopted Boma capturing techniques to control them and whether the state government is willing and ready to tackle the problem with the Boma capturing techniques.
Deputy Director (North division) of PTR Kumar Ashish, who is right now handling the Medininagar forest division temporarily, also said the set of these questions has come to the forest office here.
He said there is a definite problem with the blue bulls in Palamu. The Boma capturing techniques have so far not been put in place. It is up to the state government to take a final call on the launching of these techniques to tame and control the blue bulls’ menace.
Kumar Ashish then declined to make any further explanation.
Boma capturing techniques are quite a common practice in South Africa. It is a kind of luring animals into a separate enclosure and then releasing them far away from human habitation.
Sources said the Bihar government tried to shoot down a good number of male blue bulls about a decade ago and it did flatten scores of it. But following a huge nationwide outcry from the environmentalists, they had to cancel the mission.
Sources said that Jharkhand is delicately poised. Half of the state reels under the menace of the elephants and now half of the state feels the brunt of the blue bulls.
Unlike the casualties of human lives by the jumbos, casualties of human lives by the blue bulls are very few and countable on fingers. Nevertheless, its damaging and attacking dimension is more dangerous than the elephants.
