NEW DELHI: Whose cow is it anyway? While the sensitive issue of ‘gau raksha’ (cow protection) is being milked for political gains, two key ministries in the Narendra Modi-led Central government are shying away from taking the responsibility of framing a national law to ban cow slaughter.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the Ministry of Agriculture are at loggerheads over who is responsible for making such a law.
The Anil Madhav Dave-led MoEFCC has now conveyed to the Ministry of Agriculture that since cows are not wild but milch animals, the Department of Animal Husbandry should frame a law to ban cow slaughter and beef.
The exercise was initiated following the Himachal Pradesh High Court’s July 2016 order asking the Central government to enact a law prohibiting slaughter of cows/calfs, import or export of cows/calfs, and selling beef or beef products. The court asked the Centre to act within six months, which ended in January 2017.
“The agriculture ministry replied that as the environment ministry deals with welfare of animals, they should frame such a law. We have now written back to the agriculture ministry stating that cows are not wild animals but livestock, and thus the agriculture ministry should frame the law,” said a senior official in the MoEFCC.
A Union minister recently said they are thinking of introducing a Project Cow on the lines of Project Tiger to protect the livestock from being slaughtered. Earlier this month, five men were brutally beaten by alleged cow vigilantes on suspicion that they were smuggling the animals in Alwar district of Rajasthan. One of the victims, dairy farmer Pehlu Khan, died of injuries. It was later found that they had purchased the cows legally and had a receipt for it from Jaipur Municipal Corporation.