Lion hearts of Etawah

The issue of the "lions of Etawah" doesn't seem to go away for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. The fate of a contingent of lions sent from Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh to Uttar Pradesh last year for a lion safari at Etawah - a dream project of the ruling Samajwadi Party, incidentally - is still to be determined. In fact, during the election campaign in April Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, had ironically referred to the project as an indicator of Yadav's poor project implementation record. Now, one pair of lions has finally been shifted to the reserve but the other three pairs have been waiting in cages in the Lucknow and Kanpur zoos for several months. Why the delay? This time, it's clearance from the Central Zoo Authority (CZA). And that's creating an additional problem for the pair that's already in Etawah. Lions are apparently inherently social animals and in the absence of "social company", the lone pair are declining to mate. This time, though, it's Yadav who can point fingers at the Modi government at the Centre.