NEW DELHI, India – The long running battle to round up stray cattle on the streets of New Delhi has intensified, with the city’s high court offering a 2,000 rupee – about $46 – bounty to anyone who can catch a cow.

Within 24 hours of the order being made public, the streets were filled with amateur cowboys hoping to make quick money by catching some of the estimated 35,000 head of cattle that roam the capital untended.

Rickshaw wallahs, bus drivers, and chai boys, or tea sellers, armed themselves with sticks and staves and chased the increasingly irascible animals – Indian cows are usually placid types – around markets and down major roads.

The bounty was offered as a spur to the municipal authorities, which have failed to tackle the problem. The cows – lounging on and blocking roads and occupying parking spaces – can also be dangerous when frightened, trampling and goring at least four people to death this year.

Newspapers published guides to catching cows, giving warning that lassoing was trickier than it looked in John Wayne films and advising that a tranquilizer gun was the only really sure method.

With two cows captured and driven to the municipal pound yielding the equivalent of a month’s salary, the warnings went unheeded.

A bus driver, Chandan Singh, tried his luck between shifts, dusting himself down after a calf knocked him to the ground and ripped his shirt. Bruised but unperturbed, he picked up his stick and, mounting a motor scooter, charged off in pursuit of another beast.

“Two thousand rupees is a lot of money,” he said. “I will not rest until not a single cow or bull is left on the roads.”

The frantic roundup caused alarm among municipal leaders, who, critics allege, are reluctant to rein in the cows because the “dairy dons,” or cattle mafia, also control large voting blocs needed by politicians to retain their comfortable sinecures.

Things also threatened to turn nasty when successful cow catchers turned up at municipal offices demanding their bounty and, instead of the dreamed-of cash, received only promissory notes redeemable after the cows had been sold at auction.

It remains to be seen if the new strategy will work. City records show that last year 34,000 animals were rounded up and yet, as residents know, the number visible on the streets never seems to fall.

As if to make the point, when lawyers for the municipality pleaded with the bench for more time to round up cattle, the judge refused, saying that he had counted 16 cows on the way to work that morning.