Uttarakhand bought 10000 cows from now decommissioned Military Farm

Pashu Sandesh, 15th October 2018

Uttarakhand assembly has recently passed a legislation declaring cow as the “ Rashtra Maata”, and in a bid to project that saviour of Cow image, the State Government has recently decided to purchase 10000 cows from now decommissioned Indian military farm.

Military farms came into existence nearly 100yrs back to provide fresh supplies of Milk and Milk products to the troops. Recently Ministry of Defence has decided to decommission the Military Farms as many good options of Milk provision are now available which could provide the Milk to the troops at very reasonable rates. Military farms also occupied large land areas around the Cantonments which could otherwise be utilised for better purposes. This decision led to the curtains on 39 Military Farms with over 20000 Acres of land occupancy.

Decommissioning of Military Farms created a big logistical problem of disposal of the assets especially the high yielding Freiswal breed of cows. As per the Army sources and previously reported, for around 25000 cows very few takers had shown the interest which force the Ministry to reduce the price to merely a token amount of 1000Rs only.

Even at this token amount only few States have shown interest and majority out of 16000 cows sold thus far has taken by the Uttarakhand. Other than Uttarakhand, Assam, another BJP-ruled State, has bought 6,000 cows. Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh have bought 500 cows each, while Nagaland has taken 200 and Haryana 250.

Uttarakhand is deeply attached with Hindu mythology and has several sites of Hindu pilgrimages. Uttarakhand is a BJP governed State which has given high priority to the safety of the cows and has opposed on many occasions  cow slaughter citing Hindu traditions.