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UP govt priority: Stray cattle management outlay rivals top schemes, departments
The annual budget has seen an allocation of ₹2,000 crore for feeding destitute cattle and another ₹100 crore for building more cow shelters in the state. The provision comes amid continued rural concerns over crop damage and cattle management challenges, which the government acknowledged in its address while detailing ongoing support to shelters housing stray animals.
Managing stray cattle to protect farmers’ crops continues to be among the top priorities of the Yogi Adityanath government, with this single task securing a department-scale allocation in the state budget.
The annual budget has seen an allocation of ₹2,000 crore for feeding destitute cattle and another ₹100 crore for building more cow shelters in the state. The provision comes amid continued rural concerns over crop damage and cattle management challenges, which the government acknowledged in its address while detailing ongoing support to shelters housing stray animals. The state currently spends about ₹50 per animal per day on feed.
In fiscal terms, the allocation places cattle welfare at a scale comparable to, or greater than, major standalone schemes or some departments’ total budget, although a similar provision had been made in the previous year as well.
At least five of the UP government’s top schemes listed in the budget have the allocation lower than ₹2,100 crore set aside for the stray cattle management. Among the key schemes lagging behind the stray cow management in terms of the budgetary allocation are Atal Industrial Infrastructure Mission ( ₹2,000 crore), Mukhya Mantri Laghu Sinchai Yojana ( ₹1,375 crore), Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana ( ₹823 crore), FDI Incentive Policy-2023 ( ₹1,000 crore) and Air Strip Construction and Expansion ( ₹1,100 crore).
Even the Ayushman Bharat-Mukhya Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, which provides health insurance coverage to over 49.22 lakh beneficiaries, has an allocation of ₹500 crore.
Other independent sectors like tourism, religious endowment and culture appear to have got far lower allocation.
Some departments have lower allocations or comparable to the outlay for ‘gau seva’. For instance, the IT and electronics department has been allocated ₹2,059 crore, while the civil aviation budget is nearly at par with the cattle management provision.
The budget allocated to the civil aviation department is almost the same earmarked for stray cows, while the budget proposed for various schemes under the departments of Ayush department ( ₹20,867 crore) and horticulture ( ₹2,832 crore) rival one single scheme of stray cattle welfare.
According to the budget speech, there are 12,38,547 stray cattle housed in 7,497 small and 125 large cow shelters across the state. Besides, as many as 1,81,418 destitute cattle have been handed over to 1,13,631 farmers under the voluntary cow adoption scheme under which ₹50 per cattle are given to farmers.
An animal husbandry department official said that the Yogi Adityanath government’s commitment to cow protection has been unflinching since it came to power in 2017.
“The figures suggest that stray cattle management is no longer a marginal welfare head but a structured and sustained budget component,” he said, adding the efforts have yielded desired results and complaints regarding stray cattle have declined.
