New Delhi: The Centre made it clear in the Rajya Sabha on Friday that it can’t ban the cow slaughter since such a power is vested exclusively only with the states under Article 246(3) to legislate.
"It is up to the States to enact laws on slaughter of cows," said Minister of State for Animal Husbandry Dr Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan in a written reply to BJP member Dr Anil Agrawal,
He said Article 48 of the Constitution empowers the states to prohibit "the slaughter of cows and cows and other milch and draught cattle" and as such several states have enacted laws banning cow slaughter, with provision to penalise the accused.
Further, police and public order are also Sate subjects under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution and so the state governments are primarily responsible for prevention, detention, registration and investigation of crime and prosecuting the criminals through the machinery of their law enforcement agencies, the minister underlined.
He said as many as 34.10 lakh cattle were slaughtered during 2017-18. He also assured to collect and table on the House the instances of the cattle smuggling reported along the Indo-Bangladesh border.
The minister also informed Dr Agrawal that there are a total of 874 licensed slaughter houses in the country, 719 of them licensed by the state governments and 155 by the Centre.
Tamil Nadu tops with the highest 267 slaughter houses, followed by 140 in Jharkhand, 104 in Maharashtra (33 of them licensed by the Centre), 73 in Karnataka, 65 in Uttar Pradesh, 50 of them licensed by the Centre, 44 in Chhattisgarh, 29 in Telangana, 26 in Punjab and 27 in Jammu and Kashmir.
Madhya Pradesh is one of the large states with just three licensed slaughter houses, while another large state of West Bengal also has only 8 slaughter houses, Rajasthan 9, Bihar just 4, Assam 3, and Gujarat 2.
In Goa, there are six authorised slaughter houses, four of them licensed by the state and two by the Centre.