The Meerut Development Authority (MDA) on Tuesday sealed the machinery in the slaughterhouse owned by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Yakub Qureshi following the cancellation of the stay order prohibiting action by the authorities in relation to the slaughterhouse in the first week of February.
The map of the Al Faheem Meatex Pvt Ltd meat factory was not sanctioned by the authorities. Parts of the land on which the slaughterhouse is built falls under non-compoundable area. Earlier the administration had stayed the sealing of the slaughterhouse by the MDA. However, when the factory operator could not provide the evidence to prove that the order of the MDA to seal the factory was wrong, the stay order was canceled.
Qureshi, who has been announced as the BSP’s Lok Sabha in-charge for the Meerut-Hapur seat, had sought a stay order on the sealing from the High Court but could not get it. The MDA officials accompanied by police reached the slaughterhouse on Tuesday to seal the green belt area of the slaughterhouse and heavy security was deployed to avoid any unpleasant situation.
However, according to some reports, the authorities did a mere formality in sealing the illegal area as only a small portion was sealed. Also, the MDA team was not allowed to enter the premises initially and was later allowed inside the slaughterhouse after much struggle. The whole proceeding took only 20 minutes after which the police returned.
It is notable here that Qureshi was in the news in 2006 when he had announced a bounty of Rs 51 lakhs on the head of a Danish cartoonist for making allegedly ‘anti-Islamic’ cartoons. Qureshi was the minister of ‘Muslim Affairs’ in the then Mulayam Singh Yadav government. He had switched to BSP later.
Parts of the slaughterhouse is built on agricultural land and therefore industrial use of the land cannot be allowed. “He has applied for the change of land use too. But it is under process and we cannot sanction construction here until the formalities are completed,” said Secretary MDA, Rajeev Kumar.
