FIRs will now be lodged against those who abandon cows in Uttar Pradesh, the state’ minister for animal husbandry, Dharampal Singh, said in the state assembly on Monday.

Cases would be registered under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, Singh said.

“The Yogi Adityanath government has enacted a law for registration of a case against farmers who abandon cows,” said the minister while replying to a question by a Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA who sought to know the government’s plan to check the menace of stray cattle and compensation to those individuals who are killed by them.

“There is a difference between ‘kasai and kisan’ (butcher and farmer). We will care for the farmer, not the butcher,” said Singh.

The minister said the state government was serious on the issue of making cow shelter homes self-sufficient bodies.

“We wanted to make a cow sanctuary and I met the chief minister to discuss this for protection of cows. The CM said ‘wild animals stay in a sanctuary…cow is mother and not a wild animal’,” said the minister.

He further said: “Cow’s milk, ghee, ‘dahi’ and dung are good. Goddess Lakshmi resides in cow dung and mother Ganga lives in cow urine.”

“We are concerned about cows and are protecting them….these are not stray animals. There is a lot of difference between stray animals and abandoned animals. We call them ‘Nirashrit Govansh’,” said Singh.

“We will not allow abandoning of cows. We will buy cow milk and dung too,” he said.

Uttar Pradesh Congress spokesman Surendra Rajput said the BJP government was not sincere towards the issue of protection of cows. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 2022 poll campaign had promised to resolve the issue. He said instead of taking measures to resolve the issue the BJP government was talking about registering cases against those who abandon cows.