Lakhimpur Kheri, Oct. 25 -- The Kheri district administration has assigned the concerned nagar palika, nagar panchayat and the gram panchayat authorities to identify the areas faced with monkey menace and to arrange capture of problematic monkeys. As a part of immediate relief measures, the captured errant monkeys will be released into designated forest areas which are not protected and have survival means for the monkey population, forest department officials said. Respective local bodies will identify and register expert monkey catchers to discharge the job and share lists of these expert monkey catchers with the forest department, officials added. Following directives from the government in this regard, the Kheri district magistrate formed a nine-member, district-level committee under his chairmanship on Saturday, which would monitor and follow up the operations. In-charge of local bodies will be the member secretary of the committee, while DFO, DPRO, block development officers, police department representative, chief veterinary officer, executive officers of municipality administration and others will be members. The committee is scheduled to meet within a few days to finalise a standard operating procedure as envisaged in recently issued state directives. Confirming the formation of the district level monitoring committee, divisional forest officer (DFO), south Kheri, Tapas Mihir, told Hindustan Times that rhesus macaques had been removed from the restricted schedules of the Wildlife Protection Act and so the gram panchayats and the municipal authorities were not required to seek prior permission for capturing problematic monkeys. He added that the forest department's role was limited to providing safe and unprotected forest areas for the release of captured monkeys. Mihir stressed that captured monkeys must be certified as disease-free before being released into the wild to prevent the potential spread of infections to other wildlife populations. Meanwhile, state directives to tackle the monkey menace also envisaged long term measures of sterilisation of male problematic monkeys for their population control. DEO KANT PANDEY...