LUCKNOW: Reiterating the government’s stand, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday assured meat traders that no action would be taken against legal slaughterhouses and licence holder meat shops. He also denied allegations of witch hunting levelled by certain organisations against state government while meeting a 21-member delegation of All India Jamiat-ul-Quresh (AIJUQ), a body of meat sellers, at his official residence.
The CM said that though the government would strictly implement the NGT guidelines, no one would be targeted on the basis of religion. However, AIJUQ office-bearers said that the strike was still on as the licences of most of the meat shops would expire by March 31 and they could not open their shops.
AIJUQ’s state vice-president Haji Shaqeel Qureshi expressed satisfaction over the outcome of the talks and the CM’s assurance that anyone with proper documents and licence would not be harassed by the authorities. He also hoped that the state government would soon issue directives to the officers concerned to speed up the process of licence renewal. He appealed to meat sellers to open their shops once their licences were renewed.
Qureshi also expressed the meat sellers’ inability to open shops as their licences had expired in 2013 and municipal authorities had not renewed them. However, the delegation expressed the hope that government’s directives for licence renewal would come by Friday.
State health minister Siddharth Nath Singh, who was also present during the meeting, said that even the delegation was of the view that illegal meat shops should not be allowed to open.