Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said today his government will not allow opening of abattoirs in the state and will cancel licences for those issued by the previous regime.
Reiterating his government's commitment to cow conservation, Rawat said Uttarakhand is the first state where special police squads have been raised in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts to stop cow slaughter and cow trafficking.
"We will not allow opening slaughterhouses in the state. Those issued by previous governments will be cancelled," Rawat said at a function held here to mark signing of an MoU with a US firm to produce sex-sorted semen to increase the population of cows.
Signed between Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board and Ignuran Sorting Technology LLP of the US, the MoU is aimed at increasing the number of cows through production of sex-sorted semen at a first-of-its- kind laboratory being developed especially for the purpose in Rishikesh.
About the cow conservation act brought by the B C Khanduri government, of which he was a part, Rawat said he read in a newspaper that a licence for setting up an abattoir had been issued by the previous government in 2016 in Manglaur.
"I immediately called the district magistrate asking him to cancel the licence or any such permission granted in the past. We will not allow cow slaughter under any circumstance. There will be no licence for setting up slaughter houses in the state," the chief minister said.
Noting that raising cows can strengthen the finances of farmers in a big way, he said shelters and sheds are being built in the state to accommodate all stray cows before the Kumbh Mela.