Cow up for online Sale after Govt’s ban on sale of cow for slaughter

After the Centre’s ban on the sale of cows for slaughter, farmers and livestock traders have started putting up advertisements to sell their cows on digital marketplace OLX. The Centre might have banned the sale of cows for slaughter but the cattle traders have found a new way of making use of Digital India and circumventing the ban and that is by taking the sale to online markets such as OLX. Hundreds of cows ranging from Rs 10,000 to 300,000 have been up for sale at the OLX.

The online markets such as OLX and Quikr are replete with advertisements of cows since the Centre’s ban on May 26.

Interestingly, the prices of these cows range from as high as Rs 6 lakh for a herd and Rs 3 lakh for a white cow to a mere Rs 1,000 for a brown-and-white bovine.

On May 26, the Ministry of Environment and Forests on Thursday rolled out new rules and regulations under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act banning the sale of cows to slaughterhouses across India except for most parts of north-east India and Kerala. According to the new rules, the trade of cows is only allowed among farmland owners across India. Farmers have been seeing the new rule as an assault on agriculture. According to the reports, the rules will be implemented in next three months. Amid the controversy over the Centre's regulation of the sale of cattle across India for slaughter, the Madurai bench of the Madras high court put a four-week stay on the Central government ban on the sale of cows for slaughter and asked it and the Tamil Nadu government to reply to notices it has sent to them. However, buyers and sellers seem to be in a hurry to dispose of their cattle.