Chandigarh: Doing away with the conventional believe about the hostels being an accommodation for students perusing academics or workforce of a particular institute, a state government constituted autonomous body Haryana Gau Sewa Aayog has here on Sunday sent a proposal to set up ‘cow hostels across the state to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
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The chairman of the Aayog formed in 2013 Bhani Ram Mangla while interacting with the media said that he has discussed the proposal with state Urban Local Bodies Minister Kavita Jain, who, he said, wanted the “first such cow hostel to come up in Sonipat, her assembly constituency”.
The Aayog’s plan for a Cow hostel follows the announcement of providing Adhaar based unique identification number to the cows by the pro-hindutva BJP ruled Uttar Pardesh government in April this year. Haryana government’s Urban Local Bodies Department has been asked by the Aayog to seek land to construct these cow sheds or “cow hostels”, and wants to first run a pilot – start such hostels in one or two towns – before replicating the same in the other parts of the state “keeping in view the response to such hostels”.
“We will allow admission only to indigenous cows; not cross-bred ones”, Bhani Ram Mangla adds to his staement.
“If all goes well, we will set up societies for the management of each cow hostel. These societies will work like Resident Welfare Associations,” he said, further adding that the Urban Local Bodies Department would have ownership over the land and the societies would pay rent to the department.
Furthermore, it is assumed by the Aayog that the cow hostels will ensure protection of cows while helping to control the number of stray cattle on the roads. As per its Livestock Census of 2012, there are 1.48 lakh stray cows on the roads. Whereas Bhani Ram Mangla has been claiming that the number of such cows has come down to 25,000, reports the Indian Express.