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Centre to write to States on cow slaughter ban law

By P. Sunderarajan

NEW DELHI May 6. The Union Cabinet today took the first step towards the formulation of a stringent Central law to ban cow slaughter by deciding to write to all States requesting them to allow the Centre to come out with such a legislation.

The letter to be written by the Department of Animal Husbandry in the Union Agriculture Ministry would specifically urge the States to adopt resolutions in their legislative assemblies seeking such a legislation.

This was necessary as under the Constitution, cow slaughter is a State subject and for the Centre to pass a law on a State subject, it is essential that the legislative assembly of at least two States adopt resolutions that authorised the Centre to come out with such a law.

Announcing the Cabinet decision, the Union Minister and Cabinet spokesperson, Sushma Swaraj, noted that even now almost all States, except Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, had some law banning cow slaughter. But they were not stringent enough and had several loopholes.

For instance, many of them allowed the slaughter of old cows and this provision was misused to slaughter younger and healthier cows also.

The Animal Huusbandry Department's letter is consequently expected to pinpoint the loopholes in the present legislations and emphasise the need for a law that imposed a total ban, without any exception, and provided for old cows to be sent to `gaushalas'.

The Cabinet, which met here this evening, also decided to amend the Citizens' Act to meet a long- pending demand of Persons of Indian Origin for dual citizenship.

It would, however, not be applicable to PIOs in all the countries since the other country should have a corresponding provision. Currently, such a provision existed only in eight countries, where there was also a sizeable population of PIOs. The countries are U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Finland and Netherlands.

The dual citizenship would, therefore, be available only to PIOs in these countries.

Dual citizenship would also not be conferred automatically. PIOs would have to make an application and their credentials would be scrutinised.

Those who get dual citizenship would enjoy all benefits that an Indian citizen is entitled to, except the right to vote, the right to occupy constitutional positions and the right of employment in the three armed forces.

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