Uttar Pradesh government a few days back issued some guidelines for meat sellers and they were asked to adhere to it. One such rule stated that meat shop owners cannot set up their shops within a 50-metre radius of religious places and 100 metres from the main entrance of it. Now, officials of Food Safety and Drugs Administration (FSDA) department said that mosques are also under the ambit of a religious place.
Mamta Kumari, the designated official of FSDA said that mosques are also a religious place, therefore all meat shops will be prohibited near the mosques too, even if they get the permission from caretakers of mosque to run the shops.
“Approximately 1,340 persons have submitted the licence fee at government treasury so far to run meat shops while several hundred are still in the queue. Among them, around 250 applicants have shops near mosques. All of them have brought no-objection letters from the respective caretakers of the mosques. However, unless the government decides otherwise, these people can’t be issued licences,” said Kumari.
The members of Aman Committee have met FSDA officials a few days back so as to get some relaxation in the guidelines. On which FSDA said that the changes in the rules can only be made by the government and no one should make changes in it.
Qadir Ahmed, a member of Aman Committee, said, “It is quite unfair to prohibit one from running a meat shop close to a mosque. Like someone running a dairy shop near a temple, it is not considered objectionable to run a meat shop near a mosque.
The newly formed Yogi Adityanath government in UP has put a ban on illegal slaughterhouses after which several meat owners in the state went on an indefinite strike. Also, those meat shops will have to follow guidelines issued by the government.
