After Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj, Maneka Gandhi will open a new front against the UPA Government — against Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav’s ‘‘illegal’’ decision to lift the ban on transport of cattle on trains. And this time too, there is a nationalist spin to the issue: the UPA is targetting a ‘‘key national symbol’’, after Savarkar and the Tricolour.All BJP state governments will ask district magistrates not to issue certificates allowing cattle to be transported. Activists of People for Animals, BJP and VHP will ‘‘stop trains which we believe are loaded with cattle’’, she said today. ‘‘A country runs on symbols but they (UPA) are attacking all our key symbols: the tiranga, Savarkar and now, the cow. This government is far too weak and I think they don’t understand the value of national symbols,’’ she said.Maneka alleged that cattle were being transported to Howrah and then smuggled across to Bangladesh, where they were slaughtered and ‘‘exported or eaten locally’’.Under the Cattle Preservation Act, it is illegal to transport cattle across state borders except for draught or milk. Since the cattle were transported ‘‘almost exclusively’’ for slaughter, the Railway Minister was breaking the law, she alleged.Maneka claimed she had taken up the issue with the Railway Board chairman and with Pranab Mukherjee, who in turn, had brought it to the notice of the PM When she spoke to Laloo about it, ‘‘he used.unparliamentary language’’, Maneka alleged.
