Bal Krishna Gaushala is an austere place despite its Gelusil pink balustrade and the pink-striped ceiling in its hallway. Spread over two acres and built in January 2004, the cow shelter is home to just 40 cows. It also has a temple and a hostel for young ascetics on its property. There is no electricity connection at Bal Krishna Gaushala and water comes from a tubewell.

It all sounds idyllic, but for one detail: the cow shelter is half a kilometre inside a forest protected by the Punjab Land Preservation Act.

The encroachment doesn’t trouble Bal Krishna Gaushala’s head priest, Ramakrishnaacharya. “We are not doing any business here,” he said, “we’re only serving the cow.”

In August 2021, Bal Krishna Gaushala received a notice from Faridabad’s forest range officer. “We got a notice asking how we made this structure, when it is illegal to do so,” said Ramakrishnaacharya, adding, “There is no answer to this.”

As things stand, the chief priest hasn’t had to provide any answers to anyone so far. “Only farmhouses and gardens are being demolished,” Ramakrishnaacharya told Newslaundry, when asked about the demolition drive carried out by the Faridabad administration.

Shelter or land grab?

Cow shelters seem to be the charity of choice in Ankhir and Mewla Maharajpur villages of Haryana’s Faridabad district. Most of them are built on land protected under the Punjab Land Preservation Act, which is barred from “non-forestry” activities.

Haryana’s former environment minister Vipul Goel and local BJP councillor Kailash Baisla claimed to run cow shelters on their properties, which were listed as encroachments into forest area, as reported by Newslaundry in the first part of this series on environmental degradation in the Aravallis.

The majority of the cow shelters are run by religious organisations that are registered as charities, like the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Shri Sidhdata Ashram. When Newslaundry contacted these organisations, they refused to share their net worth or what they earn from these compounds, which usually include a temple and a residential block in addition to the cow shelter.

Almost all the cow shelters and temples in this part of the Aravallis were declared in violation of PLPA by the Faridabad administration in June 2020. The shelters were notified by the district’s forest department. For some, this was not the first time they’d been informed they were encroaching into the forest, which is an ecological treasure trove.

However, unlike marriage halls and farmhouses that have been torn down during the administration’s demolition drive, the cow shelters remain unscathed.

Environment activist Sunil Harsana, who works in the Aravallis, said, “The two most common methods for grabbing land here are building a temple or a cow shelter. For every temple, there will be a road. Then people occupy places in the vicinity. Ditto with the so-called cow shelters. Out of, say, 10 acres, cows will be kept only in one acre. The rest of the land is used for their own interests. Since it is a religious matter, no one would demolish them anytime soon.”

The VHP footprint in the Aravallis

The biggest cow shelter in this region is Shri Gopal Gaushala, run by the VHP, which is an arm of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. A sign on the Surajkund highway leads to a trail that cuts through the Aravalli hills and leads to the cow shelter.

The trail is more than a kilometre long and dung is heaped on either side of this road. These natural pits are meant to collect monsoon rain and restore groundwater levels to these semi-arid hills. However, the pits now brim with dung which has been deposited by the cow shelter’s staff.

On the cow shelter’s boundary wall is a plaque that informs the reader that Shri Gopal Gaushala is “operated by the Vishva Hindu Parishad”.

Anil Shastri, a long-time VHP member and originally from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh, told Newslaundry that the cow shelter was built in 1991. For the last 15 years, it’s been home for Shastri. Spread over acres of mountain land, there are now 1,500 cows in the shelter, he said.

“We take care of them. Many of them are sick, even disabled. Some have broken legs, a few are blind,” Shastri said of the cows.

It’s evident that the shelter makes up a small portion of the nine-acre property. In fact, the cows are packed into one corner of the plot, in an area sectioned off by wooden barricades.

Occupying far more prominent positions in this compound are the two temples, one made of stone and the other of marble, and the multi-storeyed building that houses those who run the shelter.

Unsurprisingly, Shri Gopal Gaushala was on the list of illegal Aravalli constructions prepared by Haryana government’s wildlife and forest department in June 2020.

As far as Shastri can recollect, the first time the cow shelter was sent a notice by the district administration was in 2008. The second followed in 2009; a third, in 2018. The fourth came in 2021 after the Supreme Court ordered the Haryana government to take “​​all essential measures to remove encroachments on the subject forest land without any exception,” even if this meant the use of force.

Although Shastri admitted to being “afraid” of the properties in the compound being demolished, there seemed to be little concern in Ramesh Kumar Gupta, who is the national treasurer of VHP and manages Shri Gopal Gaushala. Gupta said the government’s notice had asked about the property’s history, to which he’d sent replies. Since then, Gupta said he hadn’t been troubled with more enquiries.

“The gaushala is for the forest,” Gupta told Newslaundry. “We bought this land and have the necessary documents for it. No one has ever stopped us in the last 30 years.”

However, Gupta admitted that while there are no objection certificates, or NOCs, from the state government for recent structures, the status of the older constructions is less clear cut. “Back in 1991, the government did not hand out any NOCs. This has left the Supreme Court confused,” he claimed.

An ashram on ‘agricultural land’

A kilometre away from the VHP property stands the Shri Narayan Gaushala, built in 1990. Located in Mewla Maharajpur in Faridabad, it received a notice from the divisional forest range officer on August 1, 2021, after the structures on its property were listed as illegal. The administration directed the gaushala to remove it and restore the “original status of the land”.

The two-acre compound – which has a palatial, marble temple in it – is owned and run by Shri Sidhdata Ashram, founded by one Swami Sudarshanacharya and since his demise in 2007, managed by his son, Purushottamacharya. According to the ashram’s website, there are 300 cows at the shelter and their milk ”contains great power of protection from harmful radiation”.

Near the temple is a stagnant water body that was once a small, natural lake. Today, it is filled with plastic items and other garbage discarded by temple goers.

After receiving the notice from Faridabad administration on August 1, 2021, Shri Sidhdata Ashram took six days to draft its reply. It told the government that the cow shelter’s purpose was “spiritual activity” and its work was “very noble”.

“By protecting cows, the answering respondent is helping the nation in balanced development of nature and its bounties,” reads Shri Sidhdata Ashram’s reply.

Further it claimed the gaushala was protected by a “kacha boundary wall” and contained a “temporary structure”. “There is in fact no ‘construction per se’ on the said land and therefore there is no violation of provisions of PLPA act 1900 alleged by the forest department,” claimed Shri Sidhdara Ashram, despite the concrete roads and permanent structures (like the marble temple) on its premises.

The organisation also claimed cow protection is covered under agriculture.

Where’s the forest?

When Newslaundry visited the cow shelter, it was evident nothing grew in the compound, which is enclosed by tall walls and has concrete roads inside.

Yet Shri Sidhdata Ashram’s claim is that their structures are on “private agricultural land” and therefore should not be treated as forest area. “The Honourable Supreme Court vide its order in BS Sandhu vs GOI and others (2014) 12 SCC 172 held that notifications under section 3 to 5 of the PLPA do not conclusively prove that the land is forest land,” the organisation wrote in its letter to Faridabad administration.

The reference to the case of BS Sandhu vs the government of India is questionable since in 2018, in MC Mehta vs Union of India, the Supreme Court acknowledged the BS Sandhu case was used as a justified precedent by encroachers.

Instead, Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta stated categorically that land under PLPA should be treated as forest area: “We have no doubt that land notified by the State of Haryana under the provisions of the PLP Act must be treated as 'forest' and 'forest land' and has in fact been so treated for several decades by the State of Haryana.”

DC Tanwar is the general secretary of the ashram’s committee and a retired employee of the municipal corporation of Faridabad. When asked about the structures and the status of the land, Tanwar said, "The concerned land is in the name of the temple. We have obtained a change in land use document, or CLU, from the government. So none of the constructions here are illegal. We have written to the forest department.”

The role of the state

The claim that cow shelters should not be seen as encroachments into forest land has been sharply criticised by environment activists. “The easiest and safest way to illegally capture protected forest land here is to build a temple and release cows around it. You can get away by claiming that you’re running a cow shelter and doing dharmic duty,” said a local activist on condition of anonymity.

Shri Gopal Gaushala and Shri Narayan Gaushala are two of many cow shelters and ashrams that dot the Aravallis in Faridabad. Within a kilometre, Bal Krishna Gaushala and Paramhans Ashram also violate the PLPA. Bal Krishna Gaushala has a religious academy for children on its premises. Paramhans Ashram has a sprawling five-acre campus, with gardens and residential quarters. These two properties were also served notices by the local administration.

However, while BJP politician Vipul Goel’s property was demolished more than once in 2021 by the Faridabad municipal corporation, Paramhans Ashram hasn’t suffered as much as a scratch.

When Newslaundry asked divisional forest officer Raj Kumar if his administration was able to take any decisive action against cow shelters after serving them notices, he said, "Currently there is a ban on demolition as the cases are in court."

One may speculate if Paramhans Ashram has been able to evade demolition because of powerful friends. Its Facebook page has photos of Rajnath Singh visiting the ashram in 2015, when Singh was union home minister. In 2020, when Swami Adgadanand, the head of the ashram, contracted Covid, he received a personal phone call from prime minister Narendra Modi.

Paramhans Ashram is hardly alone in reaping benefits from “gau seva” or cow worship.

Ramesh Kumar Gupta, who manages the VHP-owned Shri Gopal Gaushala, said, “Politicians and government officials often come here for charity, including member of parliament Krishanpal Gurjar, who would visit us even before he became an MLA.”

While cow shelters have been mushrooming in this part of the Aravallis since the 1990s, the recent years have been kind to such organisations. The BJP-led Khattar government may have sent notices to some for violating PLPA, but it has also distributed large amounts of cash to cow shelters. In 2018-19, Shri Gopal Gaushala received Rs 10 lakh from the state to build shelters on its property. Gupta said the organisation also received Rs 15 for every cow, once a year, from the government.

The previous Congress-led Hooda government had pledged Rs 10 lakh to several shelters in Faridabad, Gupta told Newslaundry.

Faith vs environment

Framed as both charitable work as well as religious service (and even agriculture, in case of Shri Sidhdata Ashram), cow shelters seem to be beyond the reach of the administration’s disciplinary arm. Meanwhile, forests in the Aravallis continue to be encroached upon and a precious ecological asset is steadily depleted.

In addition to the impact of levelling and constructing upon mountain and forest land, there are relatively smaller actions by the cow shelters that could have far-ranging implications. For example, Gupta claimed the practice of filling the natural pits – which are for rainwater – with dung made the land more fertile. “We have so many trees here. They have grown with the grace of cow dung. People are going crazy about cow dung these days,” he said.

However water conservationist and former Indian Forest Service officer Manoj Misra said there was no scientific basis to Gupta’s claim. “It [cow dung] only adds to the coliform levels in the water, just like human excreta that is dumped into water bodies. Coliform levels measure the presence of bacteria harmful to humans. If we consume that water, then it is going to create problems,” Misra said.

While it remains unclear how much the cows in the shelters are benefiting from all this, it’s evident that the organisations running these shelters are violating PLPA and putting stress upon the natural habitat of the Aravallis.

This story is part of the NL Sena project which our readers contributed to. It was made possible by Rajdeep Adhikari, Shubham Kesharwani, Kunju Nayak, Abhimanyu Sinha, Himanshu Badhani, Masood Hasan Khan, Tanmay Sharma, Puneet Vishnawat, Sandeep Roy, Bharadwaj, Sai Krishna, Ayesha Siddiqua, Varuna JC, Anubhuti Varshney, Loveen Vuppala, Srinivas Rekapally, Avinash Maurya, Pavan Nishad, Abhishek Kumar, Somsubhro Chaudhuri, Sourav Agrawal, Animesh Chaudhary, Jim J, Mayank Baranda, Pallavi Das, Mayuri Walke, Saina Kathawala, Asim, Deepak Tiwari, Mohsin Jabir, Abhijeet More, Nirupam Singh, Prabhat Upadhyaya, Umesh Chander, Somasekhara Sarma, Pranav Satyam, Hitesh Vekariya, Savio Varghese, Asutosh Mourya, Nimish Dutt, Reshma Roshan, Satakarni, and other NL Sena members.