Telangana High Court Issues Directions To Control Monkey Menace, Orders State To Formulate Compensation Schemes

The Telangana High Court has issued a slew of directions to the State to curb the monkey menace in the state. 

The division bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice T. Vinod Kumar passed the directions in a batch of Public interest Litigations seeking directions to the Greater Municipal Hyderabad Corporation (GHMC) to create shelters for monkeys to prevent them from attacking people and destroying crops

The PIL also seeks direction to the State Government to acquire requisite permissions from the Centre and declare the monkeys as vermin and allow the authorities to cull the monkeys in the limits of GHMC.

The court said the issue of animal-man conflict, in relation to monkeys, requires a long term strategy involving all stakeholders and directed the State to ropein the expert bodies to comprehensively study the human-wildlife crisis and sensitise all the stakeholders as well as local population about human-wildlife conflict.

It also directed the State to conduct a comprehensive monkey census and identify the problem areas/locations. "The State Government shall also consider putting up of barriers to protect the crop-fields and solar fencing which is not lethal to the animals but deters the animals from entering the crop fields,"said the court.

The bench also directed the State to consider growing up of the fruit bearing trees in forest areas to carry out re-allocation of monkeys to nearby forest areas while adhering to Transportation of Animal Rules, 1978.

"The State Government shall also undertake training programmes to train personnel involving catching of the monkeys and demarcate the wild areas for the translocation of the monkeys," said the court.

The court also directed the State to formulate "effective financial compensation schemes" to the affected parties due to human wildlife conflict and also set up a helpline number and to give it wide publicity to receive information about sick and injured monkeys.

"The State Government shall formulate a Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) for capture and release of monkeys by the Forest Department, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and Urban Local Bodies. Such SoP ,shall also deal with specifications regarding capturing cage," the bench said.

The court granted the State six weeks time to enable them to report compliance with the directions and listed the matter for hearing on September 13.

Title: Srinivasa Rao vs The State of Telangana & Others

Click Here To Read/Download Order