'Himachal cloudburst an effect of meat eating,' IIT Mandi director tells students; WATCH

The IIT Mandi director has claimed that killing animals for meat consumption led to landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh. "Butchering innocent animals has a symbiotic relationship with the degradation of the environment," said Laxmidhar Behera, the director of IIT Mandi, while addressing students in an auditorium.

In a video that gone viral on social media, Behera can be heard telling students that people couldn't see how killing animals for their meat affects the environment currently but they would see it soon. He then said, "It already has an impact. Landslides, cloudbursts that you see again and again, these are all effects of (animal) cruelty."

The IIT Mandi director asked students to not consume meat if they wanted to "become good human beings". "To become good human beings, what do you have to do? No to meat-eating! Yes or no?" he asked students during his speech. He asked students to chant - "no meat-eating" before proceeding with his address.

This comes just weeks after Himachal and Uttarakhand witnessed heavy destruction due to torrential rains, cloudbursts, flash floods, and landslides during monsoon from July to August. About 250 people have died in rain-related incidents in Himachal since the onset of the monsoon on June 24.

Behera was criticised for blaming meat for cloudbursts in Himachal. Rahul Siddharthan, a social media user who shared the video, said: "Director of an IIT. Why is Himachal having landslides? Because of unplanned construction/deforestation/climate change/all of the above? No. Because of meat-eating. Is he saying farming animals leads to deforestation? No. He says it leads to cloudbursts."

Last month, Himachal witnessed landslides in several districts including Shimla and Mandi due to extremely heavy rain. The Himachal Pradesh government declared the massive damage caused by heavy rains as a state calamity.

On August 15, at least eight houses, including six makeshift ones, were razed to the ground and a slaughterhouse was buried under debris in a landslide in Shimla's Krishnanagar. A day before this, two landslides took place in Shimla, one at a Shiva temple in Summer Hill and the other at Fagli, which claimed several lives.

Earlier this month, Shimla MP Suresh Kashyap urged Himachal Pradesh Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla to order a geological survey of rain and landslide-hit areas of his constituency and provide immediate relief to the displaced people. 

Kashyap, the former state BJP chief, presented a memorandum to the governor apprising him of the loss and damage caused by the heavy rains, flash floods, and landslides. He demanded the allotment of five 'biswa' land to the people rendered homeless and the arrangement of alternate shelters along with free food.

(With inputs from PTI)