The Yogi Adityanath government has launched an extensive campaign to reclaim pasture land for animals across Uttar Pradesh.

As part of the initiative, the authorities have so far freed over 4,740 hectares of pasture land from illegal encroachments, out of the 6,930 hectares marked for recovery.

The initiative aims to restore essential grazing areas, benefiting livestock and supporting the agricultural community.

As of October 15, 2024, data from the Board of Revenue shows that there is a total of 61,304.504 hectares of pasture land in the state. Out of this, 6,930.619 hectares have been identified as illegally occupied. So far, 4,740.598 hectares of this land has been cleared of illegal occupation.

Deoria has 256.296 hectares of pasture land, with 16.458 hectares marked as illegally occupied. Of this, 5.431 hectares has been freed, while efforts are going on to recover the remaining 11.027 hectares.

In Jaunpur, there is a total of 1,361.983 hectares of pasture land, with 21.181 hectares freed from illegal occupation out of 70.945 hectares that was illegally occupied. A campaign is planned to reclaim 49.764 hectares from encroachment.

Similarly, in Shamli, of the total 293.577 hectares of pasture land, 27.056 hectares out of 105.752 hectares has been freed of illegal occupation, and efforts are going on to recover 78.696 hectares. Similar efforts are also underway in Bijnor, Mau, Sambhal and Ghaziabad to reclaim marked encroached land.

Regarding green fodder production on pasture land, the Animal Husbandry department reports that there are 6,708 rural cow shelters in the state. Among these, 3,060 are associated with tagged pasture land, which makes up 45.62 per cent of the total cow shelters.

The area of tagged pasture land from cow shelters is 9,334.17 hectares, with 3,107.11 hectares dedicated to green fodder, accounting for 33.29 per cent of the tagged pasture land area.