Overarching law against cow slaughter needed: Govindacharya

Claiming cow protection laws enacted by states have loopholes or are not being implemented properly, an umbrella body of organisations working in the field today pitched for an overarching legislation to ban cow slaughter and treating the crime on a par with homicide.
The Bhartiya Goseva Sankalp Samiti also demanded that the government treat cow trafficking equivalent to human trafficking.
The Samiti urged that the word 'beef' be defined only as cow meat "as it means world over". This, it said, should be done to ensure cow meat is not exported in the name of buffalo meat from the country.

"States have cow protection acts. But there are loopholes in it or are not being implemented calling for framing an overarching law centrally," former BJP leader KN Govindacharya said on behalf of the Samiti here.
Govindacharya announced a four-day programmes by the Samiti to mark completion of 50 years of the November 7, 1966 anti-cow slaughter agitation in which several demonstrators had died in the national capital.
He said, "The man to cattle ratio has declined disastrously. When India became independent the ratio was one cattle to one person. Today, the ratio is one cattle to seven person. There is an urgency to curb this decline. Hence, a central-level overarching law should be there to ban slaughter of cow lineage."

Govindacharya said cows should be sanctioned legal identity.
"No one speaks on behalf of cow when its pasture is encroached upon. The solution (to the problem) is to give cow a legal identity like it was given to Ram Lalla in Ayodhya and the case was fought on his behalf," he added.
The samiti also demanded that the government ban import- export of meat, that independent ministries dealing with cow issues are set up at central and state levels and Cow Science University formed for research on cow lineage.