The Ranchi Municipal Corporation’s decision to reconstruct a Kanji house at Bakri Bazaar for stray animals loitering on the busy streets may become even more tricky with the choice of site. Recently, during the Board Meeting of the civic body, the members, including the administrative heads, have given their consent over the plan to restart the age old Kanji house at Bakri Bazaar.
Notably, the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) had made a provision in 1979 for keeping all stray animals at temporary shelter home at Bakri Bazaar. However, Kanji House at busy Bakri Bazar has been shut since 2012 in the absence of trained human resource personnel to nab the animals including some maintenance issue in making the shelter house suitable for keeping stray animals for at least one week time.
Earlier, the Municipal Corporation had planned to construct one state -of –the- art Kanji House at Sukurhuttu Kanke, 12 km away from district headquarters covering huge area. Citing distance issue as one major constrain in taking up the project, RMC Officer (PR), Naresh Kumar Sinha said that the project at Sukurhuttu was majorly taken up for keeping milching animals especially cows.
“At the moment, we have just one option with us to restart the existing Kanji house at Bakri Bazaar by renovating it where different breeds of stray animals can be kept. New by-laws are being prepared by the officials. If required, land will be acquired for constructing new Kanji House,” added, Sinha.
According to the new by-laws proposed by the Municipal Corporation, the civic body will now auction the stray animals, if they are not claimed by their owners in the time fixed by RMC. The owners of the stray animals will also have to pay the cost of maintenance that includes the feeding cost predominately.
However, RMC is yet to finalize the penalty charges to be imposed upon the errant owners of the wandering animals nabbed by the RMC city enforcement team during the rushed hours. For maximum for 10 days, the civic body will keep the animal under its custody as per the new norms.
After informing the Town Commissioner, the stray animals will be auctioned and handed over to the new owner. Besides this, the Municipal Corporation will also penalize the owner, if the animals are found making city streets filthy and causing harms to the vegetations. The senior officials will keep the record of the wandering animals mentioning the time, location from where animals are caught etc. The revenue collected from the auction and penalty will be kept by the civic body.
Furthermore, as per the municipal guideline, all stray cattle are to be caught and kept at Kanji house – a shelter home, where the animals are kept till they are claimed and taken away by their owners falling within the municipal jurisdiction. Currently in the absence of proper shelter homes for stray animals often severe road accidents are caused as the civic body does not have any preliminary arrangements for keeping stray animals.