HC appoints committee to lay down animal slaughter guidelines

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Tuesday set up a committee under retired justice Abhay Thipsay to suggest guidelines for granting licences to animals that can be declared fit for slaughter. These would include animals not suitable for milking, agricultural, or any other purposes. The committee will also determine what animals can be categorised as “not useful” for other purposes.

A division bench of chief justice Alok Aradhe and justice Makarand Karnik passed the order on a Public Interest Litigation filed by Al-Quraish Human Welfare Trust, which said there was a lack of clarity on how animals could be declared “not useful” under the Maharashtra Preservation of Animals Act, 1976.

The trust had initially approached the high court after the Act was amended in 2015 to prohibit slaughter of useful bullocks, bulls, and calves. In May 2016, the court struck down the prohibition as unconstitutional. Despite this, there were no provisions to determine which animals were “not useful”, stated the trust’s plea.

It also said that the 1976 Act’s preamble talks about allowing certain animals for slaughter, but does not specify any criteria for this, adding that states like Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu were in the process of determining such a criterion.

Although the Act appoints BMC as the competent authority to grant licences to individual animals that can be slaughtered, the Maharashtra government has been reluctant to lay down guidelines for it. The government considered the representation in 2022, following a high court order. However, it refused to put together a policy citing requirement of guidelines by a retired HC judge led committee, which led the trust to approach the high court again.