Protest against stray cattle menace: Farmers let cattle loose at Kohara roundabout

Later the municipal corporation (MC) staff captured the cattle and shifted them to cow shelters

Members of various farmer unions on Thursday staged a protest against the authorities for failing to curb the stray cattle menace.

Members of various farmer unions taking stray cattle in tractor-trailers as part of their protest at Jamalpur Chowk on Thursday. Police had stopped the protesters from going towards the mini secretariat. (HT PHOTO)

The protesters took stray cattle from their villages on around 100 tractor-trailers and were going to march towards the deputy commissioner’s office at the Mini Secretariat here, but were stopped by the police at the Kohara roundabout on the Chandigarh Road.

The farmers let the cattle loose at the roundabout and returned after raising slogans for three hours. Later the municipal corporation (MC) staff captured the cattle and shifted them to cow shelters.

MC veterinary officer Dr YP Singh said, “Around eight trucks of cattle were shifted to cow shelters in Haibowal and Macchiwara.”

Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) general secretary Harinder Singh Lakhowal said, “It was a peaceful protest. The government had promised to get rid of stray cattle menace, but nothing has been done so far. The government is sitting on over crores of rupees in cow cess. These funds should instead be given to the union and we will handle the menace. Also, five slaughterhouses should be opened in Punjab to give livestock farmers an avenue of income.”

‘Cattle being abandoned by truckers’

The members of the BKU, Lakhowal, while staging a dharna at Kohara, said trucks being used for sand mining are also ferrying stray cattle and abandoning them in the villages and highways. “It is an organised gang that takes money to ferry the cattle but throw them on the road from the moving vehicles,” said Lakhowal, adding that many cattle die because of it and the remaining enter the fields and damage the crops.

The protesters said while the district administration had claimed to plant 5.5 lakh saplings in the city to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, stray cattle and herds of goats and sheep being reared by the nomad tribes have grazed the plantation away.

Lakhowal said a similar protest will the organised in Faridkot on Friday and in Jalandhar on February 18.