Lease of life for vultures

After a ten-year struggle, environmentalists and ornithologists in Rajasthan have finally succeeded in clamping a ban on Diclofenac ? the drug responsible for killing vultures over the past few years.

Published on: Jun 15, 2006, 02:02:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After a ten-year struggle, environmentalists and ornithologists in Rajasthan have finally succeeded in clamping a ban on Diclofenac — the drug responsible for killing vultures over the past few years.

The drug controller of Rajasthan — in an order dated June 2 — has instructed district chemist associations in the state to take immediate steps for the withdrawal of the drug from the market, while advising that marketing of such formulations should also be phased out with immediate effect. Rajasthan is possibly the first Indian state to have banned the drug.

But the Environment ministry does not appear to be happy with the action taken by the Department of Animal Husbandry to save vultures.

The ministry wants the Drug and Cosmetics Act to be amended so that Diclofenac sodium, is banned in every state.

At a meeting with senior officials of the department on Monday, environment secretary Prodipto Ghosh sought a change in the Act to ban the veterinary drug. Diclofenac can’t be banned as only drugs considered harmful to human beings or animals can be banned under the Act, animal husbandry department officials told Ghosh. Diclofenac, considered good for treatment of animal carcass and a veterinary chemical product cannot be banned under the rules of the Act, a senior government official said.

It has prompted the environment ministry to seek a change in the Act to ensure that veterinary chemicals that might lead to death of birds or any other rare species should be banned.

“Alternatives to Diclofenac are available in the market and the department should not have any problems banning it,” an environment ministry official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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