Outbreak of viral disease: ‘Intensify vigil to check cattle smuggling’

Amitava Banerjee | MP | 16 May 2023 | Darjeeling: The Animal Resource Development (ARD) department of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) has written to the police stations in the Indo-Nepal border areas and the Sashashtra Seema Bal (SSB) guarding the Indo-Nepal border to keep strict vigil on illegal movement of cattle from Nepal. 

This comes in the wake of a Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) outbreak in the GTA area bordering Nepal which is causing the death of cattle. The ARD department has also raised the demand of starting two animal quarantine centres. 

The Bijanbari Agricultural Producer Organisation Trust (BAPOT,) a farmers’ cooperative has submitted a memorandum to the District Magistrate, Darjeeling to intervene to stop illegal trafficking of domestic animals from Nepal. “There is an outbreak of LSD in many areas of Nepal. Local farmers of the GTA area have complained that cattle from Nepal are being smuggled to Sikkim via the GTA area. 

Owing to the infection they are being sold at low cost. This has in turn triggered an outbreak in the GTA area specially in the high reaches of Bijanbari, Mirik, Sukhiapokhari areas sharing borders with Nepal,”stated Ashim Raj Rana, Director, ARD, GTA talking to the Millennium Post. 

On May 11, the ARD department had written to the police and the SSB to keep check on cattle movement from Nepal, stated the Director. “In 2008 we had faced a similar problem with cattle getting infected with Foot and Mouth disease along the same Sikkim-GTA-Nepal route. Nearly 100 animals had died in the outbreak,” he added. 

The local farmers had then taken up vigil and stopped cattle from Nepal and neighbouring state Sikkim being brought into the GTA area. However with the normalisation of the situation, the routes opened up again. Incidentally India shares a porous, open and not well defined border with Nepal, hence it is difficult to check transborder movement. 

“We have also been demanding the setting up of two animal quarantine centres – one at Maneybhanjyang and the other at Phediikhola on the border. We already have a quarantine centre at Poolbazar that is in the middle of the locality hence is defunct. Either this has to be shifted or new ones have to come up where we can keep infected animals,” added Rana. 

Meanwhile BAPOT in a memorandum to the District Magistrate, Darjeeling has written that the farmers of this area are facing a grave problem with the spreading of viral disease LSD in domestic animals. 

“We have come to know that the disease is spreading from animals which are smuggled from Nepal through the route of Sandakphu, Tumling, Mohaley and Maneybhanjyang and are sold in Sikkim,” stated the memorandum. “The animals are mainly being brought in through Mohaley, Kaiyankata and illegal routes in Mirik at night,” stated Buddha Luxom of BAPOT. 

Courtesy & source- Millennium Post

https://www.millenniumpost.in/bengal/outbreak-of-viral-disease-intensify-vigil-to-check-cattle-smuggling-518819