Nearly a month after the Centre proposed a plan to have Aadhaar-like unique identification numbers for cows, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat has set out a team of technicians who have to ensure that a thousand of cows in the state are mapped. These technicians have been assigned a very delicate job i.e. to insert chips into the ears of cows for their digital tracking. The cattle will soon have unique IDs almost on the lines of Aadhaar cards, NDTV reported.
Last month, the BJP-led Gujarat government amended the state’s Animal Preservation Bill to entail a maximum punishment of life imprisonment and a minimum of 10 years for cow slaughter. Gujarat officials said that a Radio Frequency Identification Device is being used for tracing the revered cattle. The project will not only help the government track the health of cows and their productivity but also check the illegal sale or theft of the animal.
The first phase of UID will cover nearly 37,000 cows in a state which has over six million cattle. A central server system has been set up by state’s “Gauseva and Gauchar Vikas Board” at Gandhinagar that will collate all the data.
According to the project coordinator Kiran Balikai, the cattle’s name, colour types, breed, the shape of the horns, date of birth and productivity, the name of shelter, will all be fed into the central server. The project will cost state government Rs 2.8 crore.
If that wasn’t enough, the state government is planning to implant GPS chip to track the movement of cows outside shelters as well.
