Chicken becomes bone of contention between Chhattisgarh, MP
A chicken prized for its delicacy has become a bone of contention for two BJP-ruled states, with both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh staking claim to call the Indian breed black-winged chicken Kadaknath its own.
Kadaknath is much in demand not only because of its taste, but also due to its low cholesterol and high protein content. Not surprisingly, it sells at around ₹500 per kg, which is around five times the price of normal broiler chicken. In MP’s Jhabua, these birds are marketed by Gramin Vikas Trust (the NGO that runs the cooperatives breeding the bird) in various places in Gujarat, Maharashtra and even south India.
Madhya Pradesh had filed an application with the Geographical Indication (GI) registry office in Chennai in 2012, saying Kadaknath originated from Jhabua district.
But recently, when news broke that Chhattisgarh government had also applied for the GI tag for the same bird, following success of its breeding project in Dantewada, the Jhabua district administration became alert.
Jhabua collector Ashish Saxena wrote to MP animal husbandry department principal secretary Ajit Kesari on February 2 (HT has a copy of the letter) and asked them to take necessary action.
Dantewada collector Saurabh Kumar said, “Madhya Pradesh applied for the GI tag in 2012, but they have not got it. We applied for GI tag in 2017 for the Kadaknath bird, which we are producing in Dantewada. There are various formats of GI, and we have applied it under the breed preservation and conservation section.
“We are not disputing that it originated from Jhabua, but now we are producing around 2.5 lakh Kadaknath birds a year, which is much more than what MP is producing. If MP gets the GI tag, we won’t be able to call our bird Kadaknath and the women in our self-help groups will lose commercially. So we have applied.”
People in the MP animal husbandry department said the state has redoubled its efforts and may get the prized tag very soon.
“It is a complicated process and before getting the GI tag, we have to answer a lot of queries. One problematic query was to get the chicken’s blood tested. Such testing cannot be done in India, and we had to send blood samples abroad,” said an official of the animal husbandry department in Jhabua. Experts say if both states get the tag, the uniqueness and price of the product will diminish over time.