PRAYAGRAJ, Sept. 24 -- The Allahabad high court has directed the principal secretary (urban development), Uttar Pradesh, to furnish the steps taken, if any, or proposed to be taken to ensure that the local bodies fulfill their responsibilities in terms of the Uttar Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act, 1959 and the Uttar Pradesh Municipalities Act, 1916. The court was speaking with reference to the monkey menace in the cities of the state. Observing that each department was shifting responsibility to another in controlling the monkey menace, a division bench comprising of chief justice Arun Bhansali and justice Kshitij Shailendra noted inaction on the part of the state government in framing an action plan/SOPs to control the menace in response to the letter dated August 20, 2025 of the district magistrate, Ghaziabad. Hearing the PIL filed by social worker Vineet Sharma and Prajakta Singhal at length, the high court observed that it would be appropriate if the department of urban development be made a party to the proceedings since all the municipalities were administered by it. While fixing October 31 as the next date of hearing, the court in its order dated September 19 said, "Needful shall be done before the next date". During the course of the hearing, the counsel for the petitioners, Akash Vashishtha and Pawan Tiwari highlighted the miseries faced by the people on one hand and the hunger and starvation of the monkeys due to lack of food for them, in almost all districts across the state. They showed newspaper coverage of violent monkey attacks in Kaushambi, Prayagraj, Sitapur, Bareilly and Agra to the court, advancing that the issue was not limited to one or two districts but to the whole state....