Unkind cuts

Illegal abattoirs point to failure of the state apparatus

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) return to power in Bihar in alliance with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) has seen the aggressive revival of the same “beef politics” that assailed Uttar Pradesh soon after the party’s overwhelming victory there. Within hours of his appointment, state Animal Husbandry Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras said there would be no new slaughterhouses in Bihar and that the ban on cow slaughter, enshrined in a 1955 state law, would be re-imposed. Almost on cue, cow vigilantes from the Bajrang Dal attacked three men on suspicion of transporting cow meat and an illegal abattoir