Muzaffarnagar: The Centre has decided to build the country's largest cow sanctuary in Purkazi block of Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar in an attempt to resolve the problem of stray cattle, Union Minister Sanjeev Kumar Balyan said on Sunday. Balyan, the Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, said that the cow sanctuary in Muzaffarnagar will start as a pilot project. The proposed cow sanctuary will come up at Meghachandan village and will be spread over 70 hectares of government land. It will cost about Rs 700 crore to build it. It will be sheltering more than 5,000 stray cattle, he said.
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"My target is that this should be ready in the next three to four months and the next six months, no stray cattle should be seen on streets or farms of Muzaffarnagar, and all of them should be inside the cow sanctuary," he said. The Union Minister noted that small cow shelters (gaushalas) have failed to address the problem of stray cattle, which was raised by the Opposition to target the BJP in the 2022 UP Assembly elections. Balyan said that the cow sanctuary will be handed over to the State government for maintenance. Some more cow sanctuaries will be built in the state if the pilot project proves to be successful, he said.
