Financial Commissioner, Animal Husbandry, S C Agrawal today presided over a meeting of officials of the department who will train the required staff for the 18th quinquennial livestock census.

He called upon the Animal Husbandry officers to direct their subordinate staff to perform the operation conscientiously so that exact figure comes to the fore and policies and programmes for the uplift of livestock owners can be planned accordingly. During the last census which was conducted in the year 2002, there were 60 lakh buffaloes and 30 lakh other milch cattle, poultry birds and pet animals like cats and dogs.

Mr Agrawal said the survey which was conducted every five years, was the main source of data for planning and formulation of various policies and programmes of animal husbandry sector. He added that this was a central sector scheme and funds for it had been provided by the Centre.

Earlier Animal Husbandry Minister Gulzar Singh Ranike convened a meeting of senior officers of the department and passed instructions to conduct the survey in a systematic and fair manner.

Dr B S Sidhu, Director Animal Husbandry said diverse information about land holding, area under fodder, fisheries etc would be noted in addition to population figure of different species of animals. He said there are 53,72,000 households in the state and 5500 enumerators would be deployed for the purpose and 500 supervisors would oversee the process.