The observation came from a bench of Justices J S Khehar and S A Bobde when senior advocate Soli J Sorabjee argued for an NGO seeking a direction from the court to the Centre for formulating and implementing a comprehensive policy framework to completely stop cattle smuggling to Bangladesh.
The NGO 'Akhil Bharat Krishi Goseva Sangh', through advocate Manish Singhvi, said, "There is rampant smuggling of live cattle across the border to Bangladesh, which has led to depletion of cattle wealth in India and has consequently impacted the nutrition resource of Indians, especially children."
Drawing data from the 18th and 19th Livestock Census figures, the NGO said the cattle population in India in 1961 was 388 per thousand persons and it had declined to 175 per thousand persons in 2003, a reduction of 55%. Similarly, the number of buffaloes had come down from 113 per thousand persons in 1961 to 90 per thousand in 2003, a 20% decline.
READ ALSO: Rajnath Singh to BSF — Halt cattle smuggling, starve Bangladesh of beef
When Sorabjee said border vigilance against cattle smuggling needed to be strengthened, the bench said, "If the Border Security Force is to focus on stopping cattle smuggling, will it not impact their job to prevent infiltration of terrorists and illegal migration? We have not been able to deploy enough forces on our borders to stop infiltration of terrorists and you are talking about cattle smuggling."
However, it said it would like to hear this PIL along with another pending PIL on stopping large-scale cattle smuggling to Nepal for the annual slaughtering of animals during Gadhimai festival.
The court said the Centre has committed that it would take steps to prevent cattle smuggling to Nepal and has sought time to prepare a comprehensive scheme. "Once they come back to us with the scheme, we will extend it to Bangladesh border also," the bench said while issuing notice to the Centre and 12 states.
On April 2, the home minister had addressed BSF at Angrail border out-post in West Bengal and asked the BSF personnel deployed along the Indo-Bangla border to put a complete halt to smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh.
He had said, "I am told price of beef in Bangladesh has gone up by 30% recently due to heightened vigil by BSF against cattle smuggling. You further intensify your vigil so that cattle smuggling stops completely and price of beef in Bangladesh escalates 70-80% more so that people of Bangladesh give up eating beef." According to official statistics, around 17 lakh cattle were smuggled to Bangladesh from India in 2014.
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