Stray cattle enter battleground Gujarat; Opp sees chance at a ride

On October 2, Kejriwal announced at an event in Rajkot, a BJP bastion, that if voted to power, his party would provide Rs 40 per day for maintenance of each cow in the state. He also said that the AAP would build cattle pounds in each district.

Kejriwal’s announcement came two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi handed out token cheques in Banaskantha to five gaushalas (cow shelters) under the Gujarat government’s Mukhyamantri Gau Mata Poshan Yojana. The BJP government had announced this scheme in its 2022-23 budget under which it would allocate Rs 30 per day for the maintenance of each cow from a registered gaushalas. The BJP had added it in the PM’s itinerary on the last leg of his Gujarat visit after the Gujarat Gau Sewa Sangh, an umbrella body of gaushalas in the state, had threatened it would relaunch protests if the government did not release funds for cows to them by September 30. Their protests had been concentrated in Banaskantha and Kutch districts.

While making the above pledges on Gandhi Jayanti, Kejriwal said, “We consider cows as our mother, we pray to them but the way Gujarat cows are being neglected is very sad,” adding that “last few months many people met me and complained to me about it”. He also said the AAP’s scheme in Gujarat would replicate the Delhi model where Rs 40, funded equally by the Delhi government and the city’s civic bodies, is given for each cow, even as he promised to set up a “panjrapole” in each district.

In the two-day monsoon session of the Gujarat Assembly last month, the Bhupendra Patel-led BJP government scrapped the controversial Gujarat Cattle Control (Keeping and Moving) in Urban Areas Bill, 2022, which was passed in March at the conclusion of the budget session. The government’s proposal to roll back the bill was unanimously passed with the principal Opposition Congress supporting it.

On October 1, Gujarat BJP chief CR Paatil said at a TV9 event that the decision to pass this bill was “taken in haste”. While expressing regret at the accidents due to stray cattle, he also said the municipal bodies are empowered to handle the issue.The bill was passed in the Assembly following a nearly six-hour-long debate amid opposition from the Congress. It sparked widespread protests by Maldharis (cattle rearers), forcing the saffron party to withdraw it, a decision that was announced by the party’s Maldhari cell.

However, with the government not releasing the funds under the Mukhyamantri Gau Mata Poshan Yojana, the gaushalas under the Gujarat Gau Seva Sangh still launched protests by releasing cows into the government offices. There are nearly 1750 registered panjrapols and gaushalas in the state run by charitable or religious organisations. The protests coincided with the spread of the Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) that affected cattle in 26 of Gujarat’s 33 districts with the casualty crossing 5,800. The clips of mass burials of such cattle circulated widely on social media.

In August, the Gujarat Congress promised as part of its election manifesto a bonus of Rs 5 per litre for sale of milk to cattle herders on the lines of the party-ruled Rajasthan. Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot is also the senior Congress observer for the Gujarat Assembly polls due in December. On August 24, during his Gujarat visit, Gehlot promised that several social welfare schemes of his state, including Rs 5 per litre subsidy for dairy farmers, would be replicated in Gujarat if the party is voted to power.

Referring to the Gujarat gaushala owners’ “hurt sentiments” and their “betrayal”, the Congress’s manifesto also includes the pledge for revamping 1,000 gaushalas and making them more hygienic in Gujarat like what was reportedly implemented by the previous Kamal Nath-led party government in Madhya Pradesh. “We not only call them gau mata and seek votes in its name like BJP but have promised to actually work for cows. Look at the situation in Gujarat where 80 per cent of posts of veterinary doctors in the state are lying vacant along with other positions in veterinary hospitals,” the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee’s spokesperson Manish Doshi told The Indian Express.