Some meat sellers in UP have alleged that they are being targetted even after they have licences.
Highlights
- Meat sellers in UP on stike to protest action against slaughterhouses
- Action only against illegal slaughterhouses: minister Siddharth N Singh
- "Police vigilantism is unacceptable," the minister said
As meat sellers in state capital Lucknow and in many other districts of Uttar Pradesh announced an indefinite strike from today against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's order closing illegal slaughterhouses, a senior minister in the state Siddharth Nath Singh has advised officials to not be "overexcited" while imposing the ban. Mr Singh underscored, as the Chief Minister repeatedly has, that action is being taken only against illegal slaughterhouses and abattoirs operating legally will not be touched.
Here are the 10 latest developments in this story:
"Those who have licences need not worry," the minister said on Monday morning, warning that "'police vigilantism is unacceptable". He said officials must be "lenient" if there are minor compliance issues like CCTVs not being installed.
The minister's comments come amid complaints by the state's meat sellers that they are being raided and harassed by the police despite running legal businesses with licences. They have also said that the government's ban took them by surprise and they should have been warned. They have had to shut shop with supplies drying up, they said.
"We have decided to intensify our strike from today. All shops will remain closed. Fish sellers too have joined us and are extending support to us. The crackdown on slaughterhouses has adversely hit the livelihood of lakhs of people," Mubeen Qureshi, an official of the Lucknow Bakra Gosht Vypar Mandal, said.
Siddharth Nath Singh said meat sellers had been given enough time to regularise their businesses since India's green court, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), banned all illegal slaughterhouses in the state, directing the state pollution control board and other local authorities to ensure regulation of meat shops.
The NGT had on a petition ordered that meat shops and slaughterhouses must get necessary permission from local authorities and environmental clearance from the state's Environment Impact Assessment Authority to be allowed to operate.
Environment activists have said illegal slaughterhouses dispose their wastes in violation of environmental laws, polluting ground water and spreading disease.
The police said they are following procedure. "It is the police's job to check papers. Some people are closing their shops themselves because they do not have renewed licenses," said Sujata Singh, Superintendent of Police of Gautam Budh Nagar or NOIDA.
The BJP's spokesman at the centre Sambit Patra has said that, "If there is large-scale disruption, the state government will look into it and resolve the issue."
The order to close illegal slaughterhouses and to strictly enforce a ban on cow smuggling were some of the first decisions that UP's new 44-year-old Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took to fulfil a key election promise.
The BJP won a landslide mandate in the country's most populous state earlier this month and installed in the top post Mr Adityanath, also a priest seen as the BJP's hardline Hindutva face. Since he has taken over, however, Yogi Adityanath has repeatedly emphasised that his focus is inclusive development for all of UP.
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