NEW DELHI: Next time Salman Khan wants to go on a hunt, Bishnois won't be a problem. The Madhya Pradesh government is finalising a licence scheme for hunting animals which damage crops such as cheetals, blackbucks and wild boars.

Along the lines of trophy hunting that some African countries follow, the state wants to sell permits to hunt down "excess" wild animals that raid crops for food.

The plan goes like this: the government will annually auction off hunting permits which a private agency can purchase or bid for. It can then sell these to allow tourists, wannabe hunters and other enthusiasts to go in for a kill of the selected animals.

The state government believes that population of some of these wild animals has been exploding and the annual crop loss exceeds Rs 100 crore. The money gathered from the auction or selling of the hunting licences, they plan, will be ploughed back into the village level joint forest management committees. This will be used to compensate farmers who lose their crop.

"It shall be done after conducting scientific studies assessing the habitat, populations of the animals and how many such animals are required in the area to breed sustainably," said a senior official from the state. The government will assess the number of animals of each problem species in an area and how many should be culled to maintain a balance between wild populations and crop losses.

The state government proposes a strict set of rules. One cannot hunt from a vehicle or close to a populated area. The animal will have to be of certain age and hunting could be banned in some seasons. One has to be accompanied by trained licenced hunters. MP is keen to even set up schools to train hunters.

"The art of hunting is a dying one, even within the forest department and we don't want just anyone to hunt," an official explained. While the state can, if it wants, allow hunting of many such animals, it would need to get the blackbuck — which too is a major crop depredator — off the Schedule I list of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. This is bound to run into rough weather with the Centre.

Some officials in the Union environment and forestry ministry have their reservations. "This is not a low-population density apartheid hit Africa where you allow trophy hunting. We have low levels of enforcement to begin with and high levels of population living in close proximity with animals," a senior ministry official said.

MP is not the only state that has been suggesting such rules with Punjab and Himachal Pradesh too complaining of increasing crop losses due to wild animals