MP and Rajasthan pushing stray cattle into UP, says mantri

LUCKNOW: The menace of stray cattle in Uttar Pradesh took political overtones on Monday when state parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Khanna said that the people living across the borders in Congress-governed MP and Rajasthan were releasing their herds into the state.
"The entry of stray cattle from MP and Rajasthan should be looked into," he said, while responding to a query raised in the UP assembly by Congress MLA and UP party state chief Ajay Kumar Lallu who sought to ask what steps the state government was taking to curtail the menace which is damaging crops of farmers.
"The farmers have been left with no option but to guard their fields. There have been a number of instances where in stray cattle entered the fields of farmers and damaged their crops," he said.
Khanna said that the state government was taking various steps including setting up of cattle shelter homes. "We also need to consider the fact where these stray cattle are coming from. They are being left on the borders of MP and Rajasthan from where they enter into UP," he said.
His response led to a fracas in the assembly with Congress slamming the state government of making its failure a political issue. Leader of opposition and SP MLA Ram Govind Chaudhary said that the menace of stray cattle has only grown after Yogi government came to power. To this, animal husbandry ministry Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary said that during the previous SP regime the bovine were subjected to illegal slaughtering. "All that has now stopped," he said.