MP govt seeks 6,000 acre land for cow shelters, Opposition calls it gimmick

The Madhya Pradesh government will need about 6,000 acres of land to accommodate one lakh cows and its progeny as proposed by chief minister Kamal Nath, state government officials said.

The Madhya Pradesh government will need about 6,000 acres of land to accommodate one lakh cows and its progeny as proposed by chief minister Kamal Nath, state government officials said on Friday.

The Madhya Pradesh government will need about 6,000 acres of land to accommodate one lakh cows and its progeny as proposed by chief minister Kamal Nath, state government officials said. (AP)

There are about seven lakh stray cows in the state and the state government plans to develop 1,000 cow shelters to provide home to one lakh of them initially.

The Congress in its manifesto in the run-up to the state assembly elections had promised a cow shelter for every panchayat in the state. According to the proposal of the panchayati raj department, each cow shelter will be built on one acre of land to house 1,000 cows and will have five acres of land for grazing.

“If we have to provide shelter to all stray cows in the state, we will need 42,000 acres of land as per the norms decided for setting up 1,000 cow shelters,” said a government official familiar with the discussion on the subject.

The official said the department has started looking for land to set up of 1,000 cow shelters, announced in the interim budget this year.

However, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed that there was not enough land to set up these cow shelters as the Digvijaya Singh government in 2003 introduced a policy to reduce grazing land to 2% from 5% to allocate land to landless people, resulting in cattle in villages being deprived of grazing land.

Leader of Opposition in state assembly and BJP’s, Gopal Bharagava, said, “There is hardly any land available at panchayats since Digvijaya Singh government reduced grazing land norms for villages. The government also knows it well. Hence, the government’s only intention is to keep the issue alive till Lok Sabha polls for Congress’s political gains.”

Animal husbandry minister, Lakhan Singh Yadav, said, “Unlike BJP which talks of cows just for political gains, the Congress government is committed to opening goshalas (cow shelters). It has already started the initiative and results will be there for all to see. The then BJP government had fixed a meagre amount of ₹4.50 per cow for expenses in cow shelter. The Congress government has increased the amount to ₹20 per cow.”