Date:18/09/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/09/18/stories/2004091814651200.htm

National

BJP to check transport of cattle by train

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 17. The Bharatiya Janata Party today decided to rope in State administration officials, where the party is in power, to check the "illegal'' transportation of cattle by train allegedly for slaughter.

"We will stop trains which we suspect are carrying cattle ... this is completely illegal and dangerous,'' the BJP MP and former Union Minister, Maneka Gandhi, said at the party briefing. That the BJP has decided to direct the Collectors in States it is in power by making them responsible to check the movement is announced by the party general secretary, Arun Jaitley.

Ms. Gandhi said she had taken up the issue of transportation of cattle by train with the Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, the Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the Railway Board Chairman. But, she said, the Railway Minister rejected the suggestion that railways stop transportation.

She said that as per the Cattle Prevention Act, it was illegal to transport cattle across State borders for purposes of slaughter and allowed only in case of draught and milch cattle.

She said West Bengal and Kerala were the only two States where cattle slaughter was allowed but the provision was that the cattle have to be over 16 years.

The Indian Railways, she said, for the past three decades had been transporting cattle from North Indian States only in the direction of West Bengal charged that these were then taken to Bangladesh for slaughter.

"The fact that they are going to Bangladesh is undisputed,'' she said.