House raises concern over poor upkeep of cow shelters

Poor upkeep of the cow shelters across the state echoed loud in Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday with House witnessing heated exchanges between the members of the ruling party and the Opposition.

Opposition members were agitated over the remarks of agriculture minister Chander Kumar, while he was replying to a question raised by Kullu MLA Bhubaneswar Gaur. House witnessed sharp exchanges between the lawmakers for a while. Question hour proceeded only after speaker Kuldeep Pathania assured the members to remove the remarks from the proceedings.

“Cow’s status was equivalent to that of a mother which shall not remain limited merely to the papers,” said chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. He said his government will make efforts to provide good facilities at the cow shelters.

He said that no cow sanctuary will be constructed at a place where it is difficult to provide facilities.

Earlier, on the question of MLAs Bhubaneswar Gaur, KL Thakur and Vinod Sultanpuri and the supplementary question of Sanjay Rattan, Satpal Singh Satti and leader of Opposition Jai Ram Thakur, agriculture minister Chandra Kumar said the trend of setting up cow shelters has been prevalent for some time now.

“The number of cow sadans has increased but the truth is that the condition has turned from bad to worse,” he said.

Giving details, he said that currently there are 261 cow shelters in the state and government grants were being provided to 198 of them. He said that 13 shelters were being run animal husbandry department and the remaining 185 by non-government organisations with grants received from the state government.

The remaining 63 shelters were being run by non-government organisations on their own without any grant, he added.