Chant Hanuman Chalisa to stop monkey menace: Adityanath

Authorities in the national capital can take a leaf out of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's advice on ways to tackle the monkey menace in the VIP zone.

Adityanath, when told about the monkey menace in the temple town of Vrindavan in state's Mathura district, about 400 km from here, came out with a divine solution to resolve the problem.

"Recite Hanuman Chalisa (hymns praising the deeds of Lord Hanuman, the monkey god).....perform their (monkey) arti (worshiping with lighted earthen lamps)....they will not harm you," the chief minister told a group of people, who complained about the menace and asked him to do something, at an event at Vrindavan on Friday evening.

"Love the monkeys and they will become your friends...don't try to shoo them away," he said.

The chief minister, who was also the head of the Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur, also shared his personal experience to drive home his magic mantra.

He said that a monkey often used to enter his office in the temple and sat on his lap while he worked there. "I gave it a banana....it came again the next day and later it started coming daily...it would come, take the banana and go away," Adityanath said.

One day an employee at the temple tried to shoo it away which angered the monkey and it pounced on him. "The monkey was a wild one, not a pet," he added.

It remains to be seen if the victims of the monkey menace try the Adityanath formula and resolve the problem.