MUMBAI, January 6: Butchers have termed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) decision to henceforth allow slaughter of animals only at the Deonar abattoir a `political gimmick.' Last week the BMC had announced, along with its decision, that action will be initiated against owners of meatshops across the city from January 24. Rajesh Sharma, in charge of the Deonar abattoir, had stated that licences of 189 meat shop owners will be revoked.Reacting to the decision, general secretary of Suburban Khatik Association, Mohammad Ali Patel, alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was trying to please the Jain community with an eye on the state elections just a year away.Patel said, ``In fact, shop-keepers with licences from the BMC had complained against the illegal slaughter to Sharma. Because of such shops we are facing problems.'' But instead of protecting us, the BMC decided to take action against every shop-keepper, he complained adding that all along Sharma had promised that they would beallowed to carry on with their business.Patel informed that action against the 189 shop-keepers will amount to contempt of court as the Bombay High Court had stayed the BMC's decision to revoke their licences it had issued in 1991.Defending his decision Sharma stated that then deputy municipal commissioner G R Khairnar had taken a wrong decision. ``The municipal commissioner realised this and hence revoked the licences the same year,'' he explained. But in absence of any action, the number of these shops had increased about 4,000 in the city, according to statistics available with the BMC.Sharma claimed that there was a need to put an end to the proliferation of such shops since it created health problems. ``The animals are slaughtered in the open and the waste is dumped in the nearby gutters. Moreover, no checks are conducted on whether the animals are healthy or diseases,'' he added.He ruled out the possibility of the price of meat going up. ``Instead of transporting the animals to their shopsand then slaughtering them, they will have to transport the meat,'' said Sharma. The corporation has also reduced the slaughtering charge by Rs five per animal as they have decided not to transport the meat to the shops in the city.The increased slaughtering in the abattoir will also add to the abattoir's revenues. Sharma estimated that it will get an additional Rs four crore every year while the abattoir is now running at an annual loss of Rs nine crore.
