Dehradun, August 11

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said on Saturday that his government would not allow opening of abattoir in the state and would cancel licences for those issued by the previous regime.

Reiterating his government’s commitment to cow conservation, Rawat said Uttarakhand was the first state where special police squads had been raised in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts to stop cow slaughter and cow trafficking.

Rawat said this at a function held here to mark the signing of an MoU with a US firm to produce sex-sorted semen to increase the population of cows. 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 in Rishikesh.

About the cow conservation Act brought by the Khanduri government, 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 circumstances,” he said. Noting that raising cows can strengthen the finances of farmers in a big way, he said shelters and sheds were being built to accommodate all stray cows before the Kumbh Mela. PTI