After the suspicious death of 14 horses and mules in two days on the Kedarnath Yatra route, Secretary Animal Husbandry Dr. BVR Purushottam has imposed a 24-hour ban on their movement. On Tuesday, teams from the Central Government and Haryana will reach Kedarnath and investigate. The government has taken seriously the cases of death of horses and mules used to transport pilgrims on the Kedarnath Yatra route. After the death of eight horses and mules on Sunday and six on Monday, Secretary Animal Husbandry Dr. BVR Purushottam reached Rudraprayag. Looking at the situation, he has imposed a ban on the movement of horses and mules on the Kedarnath route for the next 24 hours. Dr. Purushottam said that full care is being taken to ensure that this disease does not spread among the horses and mules. He informed that a team from the central government and a team from Hisar in Haryana are reaching Kedarnath on Tuesday. Both the teams will investigate the suspicious deaths of horses and mules. The Animal Husbandry Secretary said that after the symptoms of equine influenza were found earlier, a record 16,000 horses and mules were tested between April 4 and April 30. Out of these, 152 animals were found positive in sero sampling. The RTPCR report was negative. He said that prima facie the cause of deaths seems to be some bacterial infection. However, the situation will be clear only after the investigation of the teams.
Horses and mules will be tested before walking on the Kedarnath route
Animal Husbandry Secretary Dr. Purushottam said that horses and mules will be tested first before walking on the Kedarnath route. Only after the test comes negative, they will be sent on the Yatra route. He told that in the year 2010, the entire yatra was stopped after such a problem, but since we have already done a lot of investigations, the yatra will not be stopped completely.
If symptoms are found, horses and mules will be quarantined
All the horses and mules on the Kedarnath Yatra route are being examined. If any of them has symptoms like a runny nose, then RTPCR test will be done on those animals. Those horses and mules will be kept in the quarantine center till the test report comes. Those who are found positive in the report will be sent on the Yatra route.
