January 2nd, 2020 / 4:02 PM
Image Credit:ANI
The Department of Animal Husbandry, Himachal Pradesh, on January 1, Wednesday declared that they would set up cow sanctuaries in 11 districts of the state.
Cow sanctuary will be set up in all the districts except Lahaul Spiti. The aim is to protect and provide shelter to stray cattle and also give them a suitable environment to breed. The government is also contemplating to allot a portion of land just for their grazing as per the availability of land resources in the state.
The declaration came two years after the first cow sanctuary in India which was established in Madhya-Pradesh in September 2017 came into being. Kamdhenu Gau Abhyaranya in Agar Malwa, 190 km north-west of Bhopal, was developed by the MP Gau Samvardhan Board by spending about Rs 32 crore. Around 4,000 cows are living in the sanctuary which is spread across 472 hectares.
Earlier in 2019, the newly formed Rashtriya Kamdhenu Ayog urged the Centre to make it compulsory for every state and the union territory to set up cow sanctuaries in their respective states.
Rajasthan Government on July 27, 2018, also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish its first ‘Cow Sanctuary’, a shelter for 10,000 cows. The MoU was signed with a private trust Sohanlalji Buladeviji Ojha Gaushala Samiti.
The cow sanctuary will be located in Bikaner district and will spread over an area of more than 220 hectares in Bikaner district.
The livestock population in India has witnessed a rise by 4.6%, from 512 million in 2012 to nearly 536 million in 2019. The overall cattle rise witnessed a marginal increase. But, the population of cows, which account for one-fourth of the total livestock population, showed a surge of 18% when compared with the last census.
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Written by : Prashasti Awasthi
Edited by : Bharat Nayak