Rajasthan | Cows that live only on paper
CAG finds huge anomalies in Rajasthan's cow shelter programme—non-existent cattle may have munched off crores of public money
FECKLESS MATADORS: A cow shelter in Sanchore, Rajasthan. (Photo: Purushottam Diwakar)
ISSUE DATE: Sep 21, 2026 | UPDATED: Sep 12, 2026 15:11 IST
In the 1995 ghetto drama La Haine, a character hallucinates about a cow wandering across a Parisian suburb. What’s surreal in France is, of course, utterly ordinary in India—but it seems phantom cows do exist here. If the grey areas flagged by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) turn out to be maximally black, as many as 131,000 cows may have existed only on Rajasthan’s official documents. What’s more, in the year ended March 2024, they even devoured Rs 57.36 crore in excess grants.