Himachal elections: now, getting a monkey off the back

Shimla 30/10/2017:
**Picture for Himachal Election**
A monkey sits atop an overhead water tank in Shimla on Monday, October 30, 2017. Increasing number of vermin has added to the woes of residents of queen of hills and failure to tackle the menace has become an issue in forthcoming state assembly election. Photo: Akhilesh Kumar

If there is one election promise that both rival parties make in Himachal Pradesh, it is action against monkeys. The voters are only too happy, harassed as they are by attacks and crop raids. As many as 2,000 villages across the hill State are affected by attacks by monkeys.

The BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, Prem Kumar Dhumal, blames the Congress government for not running animal birth control programmes to reduce the monkey numbers.

“They have not run this programme in an effective manner, and it seems that the number of monkeys has increased,” he says.

“We will motivate farmers to install net fencing around their fields. We will also take other steps as this problem is not limited to villages and has spread to the cities as well.”

BJP State unit president Satpal Satti, who is seeking re-election from Una, alleges that the Congress government has failed to tackle the problem.

However, Industries Minister Mukesh Agnihotri said, “We have run sterilisation campaigns and taken other steps as well. We will take more steps needed to tackle the problem.” A census in 2015 counted over 2,400 monkeys within the Shimla municipal limits.