The Hindu : New Delhi News : Nod for tracking stray cattle with microchips

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 06, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Nod for tracking stray cattle with microchips

By Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI, APRIL 5. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has cleared the controversial proposal to implant computer chip in the stomachs of buffaloes and cows to ascertain their ownership and keep track of their movement in the city. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party has expressed the fear that the project would make milk costlier and also put an unnecessary financial burden on dairy owners.

The proposal was passed recently by the MCD Standing Committee without any debate. The civic body expressed the hope that the microchips in the stomachs of bovines -- to be read through a special scanner -- would help keep track of their movement in the city, besides checking the mushrooming growth of unauthorised dairies. In fact, a similar project is already being implemented in Punjab and is a common practice in developed countries.

The microchip will have a unique identity number and will ensure that no new animals are smuggled into the city from the neighbouring States and also check the menace of stray cattle. The owners of all authorised dairies would be charged Rs.900 for each implant. Each microchip would be given orally to the animals and it would then get embedded in their stomach. The civic body has warned that those animals found without the microchip would be impounded and auctioned.

The MCD took this decision after the Supreme Court's directed that all unauthorised dairies be relocated at Ghogha in Narela in North-West Delhi. Significantly, while a Corporation survey revealed that there were nearly 35,000 cows and buffaloes in these unauthorised dairies, the civic body was surprised to receive applications for allotment of land for as many as 50,000 cows and buffaloes. Later, investigations revealed that some people from the neighbouring townships and land sharks were trying to get dairy land allotted in Ghogha.

Under the Ghogha dairy relocation scheme, the Delhi Government has allotted 180 acres for the development of a dairy colony with all the necessary facilities and basic infrastructure. The Corporation officials plan to implant the microchip in cattle when dairy owners move here and subsequently, every year the dairy owners would have to pass the chip detection test and those without them would be impounded.

However, the BJP Councillor and Standing Committee Member, Vijender Kumar Gupta, has accused the Congress leaders in the civic body of getting the controversial issue passed in haste without any discussion. "The impractical scheme would not only result in waste of public money as well as that of dairy owners, it will also increase the cost of milk in the Capital," he said.

Mr. Gupta also alleged that the proposal was opposed by the BJP as it was prepared to financially benefit some predetermined private operator and not to control the unauthorised dairy menace in the city. The matter was then referred to a sub-committee for investigation but it never met. But the Standing Committee without any discussion approved the recommendations of the so-called sub-committee, he added.

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