BJP forms team to study beef ban laws

Cattle cues

The ruling BJP has formed an internal party team to study laws pertaining to the ban on cattle slaughter enacted by other states, even as Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa is under pressure from ‘gaurakshaks’ to prohibit the killing of cows in Karnataka.

The Yediyurappa-led BJP had, in 2010, passed a bill that essentially placed a blanket ban on cattle slaughter, which was overturned by the Siddaramaiah-led Congress regime in 2013.

The state BJP unit has now constituted a team of legal experts to look at what other states had done on prohibiting cattle slaughter.

This is in the wake of petitions by Vijayapura MLA Basangouda Patil Yatnal and BJP Gau Samrakshana Prakoshta, who demanded that the state government re-enact the cow slaughter prevention bill and strengthen its provisions.

Tourism and Kannada & Culture Minister C T Ravi told DH a team of six to seven legal experts will travel to different states that enacted laws similar to the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, in 2010. “They will study all the Acts which are in force and submit a report to the state government as early as possible,” he said.

The purpose of the study is to learn from the provisions that are in force elsewhere, which could be included in the new bill, he said.

In 2010, when Yediyurappa was the chief minister, the BJP government got the controversial Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill passed amid resistance from the Opposition Congress, following in the footsteps of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that had a similar law in place.

The bill proposed to replace the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964.

The BJP’s bill had widened the definition of ‘cattle’ and imposed a blanket ban on cattle slaughter, coupled with stringent penalty clauses for violation.

The bill was before the President for his assent when, in 2013, the Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah withdrew it, restoring the 1964 Act that allowed slaughter of bulls, bullocks and buffaloes if they were aged over 12 years or if they were unfit for breeding or did not give milk. In a statement, the Karnataka BJP has urged Yediyurappa to re-enact the bill while hitting out at Siddaramaiah for “withdrawing it and allowing the killing of cows”.