Express News Service
LUCKNOW: While the nation is debating the spate in incidents of lynchings by cow vigilantes, the Uttar Pradesh government has stepped up its cow protection efforts, especially in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi and Faizabad. In Varanasi, the UP government has initiated the process of construction of a bovine shelter home under the ambit of the Centre’s ambitious Smart City project. In Faizabad, the district administration has come up with a sprawling 2,529 sq mt cow shelter and grazing land for stray and abandon cattle.
As per the plan in Varanasi, the proposal would allow the state government to get a defined area for setting up the cow shelter. However, in other districts of UP, the government is striving to identify land for the construction of cow shelters. According to highly-placed sources, for the Varanasi project, the state government has already made a budgetary provision of over Rs 10 crore and the cow shelter with an estimated capacity to house 5,000 animals at a time would be constructed under the Smart City project.
In Faizabad, the cow shelter and grazing ground has been developed in Baisingh Village of Sadar Tehsil under Ayodhya Assembly constituency. Sources claimed that state urban development department had urged the revenue department to make the land available for construction of bovine shelter homes in the state.
