The Planning Commission has deleted a controversial clause recommending a review of the ban on beef exports from its working group report for the 12th Plan.
In a statement, the Commission said that the Chairman of the working group, Dr V.K. Taneja, Vice-Chancellor, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary & Animal Science University, Ludhiana, has informed it that the recommendation was “an inadvertent clerical mistake. He has suggested that the recommendation should be deleted.”
The necessary changes have been made in the report, the statement said.
In its report in November last year, one of the recommendations of the report in Chapter XII was: “The country needs to have consistent and uniform slaughter policy across different States to make the industry competitive. There is an existing ban on beef exports; therefore it is necessary to revise the EXIM Policy to allow beef export.”
Following this, a hue and cry was raised by various organisations, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The Planning Commission, in its statement, said that insofar as trade in beef is concerned the ban on exports involved cultural sensitivity of millions of people and hence, it cannot be viewed purely on a ‘commodity mode.'
The Planning Commission has no intention of making any recommendation to change the present position, it said.
Though beef exports are banned, India, however, exports buffalo meat, processed meat, sheep and goat meat. During April-November period of the current fiscal, exports of meat and its products were to the tune of Rs 2,179 crore against Rs 1,576 crore during the same period a year ago.
During 2010-11, exports of meat and its products totalled Rs 8,775.90 crore against Rs 6,288.09 crore the previous year. Of this, buffalo meat exports were 7.09 lakh tonnes valued at Rs 8,412 crore against 4.95 lakh tonnes valued at Rs 5,480 crore.