Cow slaughter akin to sin, says Agriculture minister Radha Mohan

NEW DELHI: Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh has said that cow slaughter was akin to committing a sin but like most BJP leaders from Bihar, refrained from commenting on the Dadri incident, where 50-year-old Mohammad Aklaq was lynched by a mob allegedly for storing and consuming beef. His ministry has convened a meeting to discuss if cow slaughter had anything to do with spike in beef exports.

The UP government reacted to Radha Mohan’s comments by saying the licence of exporting beef was with the Centre. UP minister Rajendra Chowdhry said, "the comments of central ministers are blatant lies. They think they can fool people all the time... The licence for exporting beef etc is given by the Centre. Why don’t they ban it, if they feel it is happening in UP and is wrong? We have not given export licenses.”

He said that it was during the previous BJP governments in the state that slaughter houses came up but the present dispensation at the centre is now blaming them.

The agriculture minister has convened a meeting of officials of the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) to examine if there is a co-relation between the jump in export of meat and the increasing cases of cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh and other states. Minister of State for Agriculture Sanjeev Balyan will hold the meeting with Apeda officials on Tuesday. "The export of meat has gone up in recent months. At the same time, cow slaughter has become rampant in UP and other states,” he said.

On Lalu Prasad’s remarks, Radha Mohan Singh told ET, "India has an agrarian economy and domestication of animals like cows is the backbone of this system. Since ancient times there has been a belief that if a farmer owns a cow then his family will never die of hunger. It is believed that the cow brings prosperity and abundance in the family.