Jaipur: When 26-year-old Hakam Dan – a resident of Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer district – received information on Sunday (May 24) that a sick bull was lying at the dumping yard of the local municipal council, he rushed to the spot along with several others.The sight that greeted him at the dumping yard – situated more than five kilometres from the district headquarters – left Dan shocked.“The bull couldn’t be saved and died before we reached. All around us we could see bovine carcasses. Dead cows and bulls dumped in the open amid garbage and plastic waste. In our estimates, the number of carcasses amounted to more than thousand. Some of the carcasses had decomposed in the searing heat and the stench was unbearable,” Dan told The Wire.Dan, who said that he is the district president of the Gaurakshak Sewa Samiti – a cow protection group – claimed that hundreds of animal carcasses were left at the dumping yard over a long stretch.“Despite the fact that this is a longstanding issue and we had earlier demanded that the administration should ensure proper disposal of dead bovine carcasses, hundreds of carcasses were strewn across the dumping yard. It was very painful to see the cow, whom we have given the status of our mother to see in this state. I decided to shoot videos and upload them on social media to highlight the sorry state of affairs,” said Dan.As videos of the bovine carcasses from the dumping yard went viral on social media, it led to severe outrage, with many users slamming the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the issue. The saffron party routinely invokes the cow in its political rhetoric as a sacred symbol of utmost importance to the Hindu religion.The gap between political speeches and the situation on the groundThe fact that the incident took place in Rajasthan, a BJP-ruled state where the country’s first ministry dedicated to cows was established back in 2014 by the then BJP government, further reveals the gap between political speeches and the situation on the ground.Much like other BJP-ruled states, the cow is a permanent fixture in speeches made by BJP leaders in Rajasthan.Last year, on the sidelines of the ‘Cow Mahakumbh’ – touted as a global summit for cows – in Jaipur, chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma had said that his government’s vision was to transform Rajasthan into India’s largest dairy hub. The participants at the ‘Cow Mahakumbh’, which was attended by ministers in the Rajasthan government along with the CM, had made several claims lacking any scientific basis, including those of cow urine curing cancer and mental illnesses.Rajasthan has also seen several lynchings of Muslim men transporting cows. Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer from Haryana was lynched in broad daylight in 2017, with the assault on him being caught on camera. Nasir and Junaid, two Muslim men from Bharatpur were allegedly murdered by cow vigilantes in 2023. The Wire had earlier reported that while their families await justice, how one of the cow vigilantes accused of the murder of Nasir and Junaid received a hero’s welcome after being granted bail.In recent years, cow vigilantism has also spread to other BJP-ruled states as well, with the latest example being West Bengal, where just three days after the BJP government was sworn in earlier this month, four Muslim men were brutally beaten in Katwa town of Purba Bardhaman district, and then handed over to the police by senior BJP leaders who were accompanied by members of the Bajrang Dal. The attackers suspected that the four men were smuggling cattle.However, at a time when citizens have been harassed, injured and killed over the sale, transportation and consumption of meat, India’s own exports of meat have only grown, with buffalo meat accounting for most of the meat exports, data furnished by the Union government in the parliament has revealed.Farmer leaders say that a large stray bovine population and inadequate number of cow shelters are problems which require urgent intervention from the government.“The problem is that once cows stop giving milk, they are abandoned and there are simply not enough gaushalas (cow shelters) to house all stray bovines. As a result, many gaushalas are full beyond their capacity, resulting in inconvenience for the animals. At present the severe heatwave that we are witnessing requires adequate arrangement of water for bovines in gaushalas, which is not possible due to sheer number of animals as a result of which cows die,” farmer leader Santveer Singh, general secretary of the Grameen Kisan Mazdoor Samiti told The Wire.“The kind of work that the government should do if it regards the cow as mother, is not happening. There is an urgent need for measures such as opening new gaushalas and ensuring that those cow breeds are encouraged more which suit the climate of the state,” Singh added.‘Terminated contract’After the videos of the bovine carcasses went viral, the Jaisalmer Municipal Council took cognisance and said that it found that the carcass bone contractor was not disposing off the dead animals in the designated site and instead had thrown them at the dumping yard, the civic body said in a statement.Lajpal Singh Sodha, the commissioner of the Jaisalmer Municipal Council told The Wire that the contractor who was awarded the tender for the disposal of bones and skins of dead animals by the civic body was also responsible for disposing of carcasses in a designated area.“We have found that in the past one month, the present contractor was collecting carcasses and leaving them to dry inside the dumping yard and not inside the designated area. We have terminated his contract and blacklisted him from future tenders,” said Sodha.He claimed that after the incident came to the notice of the civic body on Sunday, teams of the Jaisalmer Municipal Council buried all the animal carcasses by digging trenches, according to the rules.While Municipal Council commissioner Sodha said that there were around 150 bovine carcasses, Dan, who shot the video, claimed that there were more than a thousand carcasses.The ruling BJP in Rajasthan has also come under fire from the opposition Congress.‘Livestock in crisis’“The discovery of the rotting corpses of hundreds of cows in a horrifying and heart-wrenching state at the Jaisalmer Municipal Council’s dumping site is not merely an instance of administrative negligence, but a terrifying example of the collapse of human sensitivities and a glaring failure of the government,” Congress MP from Barmer-Jaisalmer Ummeda Ram Beniwal wrote on X.Beniwal alleged that it is not just the border district of Jaisalmer, livestock is facing a severe crisis across the state due to scorching heat, water scarcity, fodder shortages, and administrative mismanagement.The Congress has accused the BJP of engaging in politics in the name of cow protection but not being concerned about the plight of the animals.“Those who engage in politics in the name of cow protection to seize power must now answer. Where do the sensitivities of those who deliver grand speeches from platforms disappear when the mother cow is gasping her last breath amid hunger, thirst, and garbage at the dumping site?” said Congress’s Barmer-Jaisalmer MP Beniwal.When contacted, Rajasthan BJP spokesperson Ramlal Shama told The Wire, “Tenders are issued for the task of disposing off cattle carcasses as per rules. The government has immediately taken action against the negligent contractor after the matter came into our cognisance. The BJP has always had reverence towards the mother cow and it will always be there. Congress always shows its double standards and its stands keep varying. When it was in power, the Congress didn’t do anything for the welfare of cows.”