The Centre has come out with a novel idea to stop the menace of monkeys in urban areas.
It has suggested to the Supreme Court that there should be a legal ban on people feeding monkeys to stop the menace!
The Action Plan for Control of Stray Animal Menace, prepared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, was placed before a Bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice D M Dharmadhikari by counsel A D N Rao.
The court, after accepting the action plan originally prepared to tackle the monkey menace in Delhi and Shimla, asked all the state governments to tell the court why such a plan should not be implemented in their states.
The Bench wanted to know how much time the states would need to implement such a plan, who would be the implementing authority and what more provisions should be incorporated in the plan.
The plan suggested, "It can be in the form of a municipal regulation by the local municipality. This would also envisage a close involvement of temple authorities. It would be an integrated strategy of enlisting their cooperation in regulating the system of food offerings by devotees to only one fixed place so that the scattered food in various places is not available for monkeys."
