Dehradun, January 31: The Uttarakhand Government has started an ambitious programme to buy cow urine through milk cooperative societies and sell it to Ayurvedic pharmacies or to be used in making Ayurvedic medicines.

The state Government already has a demand lying with it for 5,000 litres of cow urine from Swami Ramdev’s pharmacy at Haridwar, sources said.

The first phase of the programme to buy cow urine at the rate of Rs 5 per litre was started at Kalsi in Chakrata tehsil of Dehradun this month. “We will be starting the next phase from Srinagar Garhwal soon,” said Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. A total of 1,900 active milk cooperatives would be engaged to collect cow urine, later to be sold to the Ayurvedic pharmacies or to be used in making Ayurvedic medicines.

“We do not have the facilities to make concentrate of cow urine, so we are buying cow urine that we can process,” said Rawat. Apart from this, the state Government is also keen to start a Cow Research Institute. Rawat himself visited Kanpur recently to study the upkeep of ‘goshalas’(cow sheds) being run in Uttar Pradesh.

A team of officials also visited Jaipur for evaluating the work being done in Rajasthan. “We wanted to collect all the information, so that we can have an excellent research facility in the shape of the proposed Cow Research Institute,” said Trivendra Singh Rawat.

Earlier, the Government decided to set up a Cow Science and Technology Institute in Chamoli district. A provision of Rs 3 crore was made for the proposed institute in the first budget presented by the state Government. The institute, a first of its kind in the country, will do research on the various breeds of indigenous cows. It will also conduct research on the medicinal values of cow urine and cow dung.

The institute is also supposed to develop various medicines made from cow urine that would reduce dependency on anti-biotic medicines. The Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, has prepared a blueprint for the proposed institute. A sum of Rs 20 crore would be spent on the institute that will be spread over an area of 20 acres.

According to officials, research to improve the milk-giving capacity of various breeds of indigenous cows namely ‘Badri’, the red small cow of the hills, ‘Sahiwal’, ‘Thar’ and ‘Sindhi’ would also be undertaken. Officials believe that the urine of ‘Badri’ has a unique quality to treat cancer.

The institute is a brainchild of Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, a former RSS parcharak. Meanwhile, the state had also enacted an Act to protect cow progeny. “These measures will help the small hill farmers who are very poor,” Rawat claimed.