More than fifty thousand chickens will be plucked within the next two days in West Bengal’s Murshidabad region to fight the fresh bird flu eruption.

In order to cull the affected poultry, about 50 Rapid Response groups have been set up in Raghunathganj and Jiagang blocks of Murshidabad area.

Anisur Rahman, State’s Animal Resources Development minister said presently the condition is under control.

On Friday, Bhopal’s High Security Animal Disease Laboratory reported fresh bird flu cases in West Bengal. The laboratory confirmed that the blood samples sent from Raghunathganj and Jiaganj from Murshidabad region were infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.

This fresh Bird Flu epidemic in Murshidabad has bobbed up doubts regarding the culling process carried out by the government in January when bird flu attacked 13 zones of West Bengal.

At first, the bird flu epidemic in West Bengal was confirmed on January 15. But, the state hadn’t reported new disease eruptions since Feb. 2.

Incidentally, Murshidabad was the epicentre of the recent occurrence.

But Rahman thinks that the fresh eruption is not the result of any lapse.

Rahman said, “'You know more than 40 lakh birds have been culled in the 16 districts but all preventive measures were taken there. Even ban was imposed for import and marketing of the poultry, but despite of that it is the nature of the virus. It is not at all unnatural, it is natural that it can emerge in sporadic form in some area.”

This time, the challenge before the state government is to make sure that the virus is contained in the two blocks of Murshidabad district.