Advisory to close slaughterhouses was issued hastily, animal board tells HC

NEWS STATES TAMIL NADU
TAMIL NADU
Advisory to close slaughterhouses was issued hastily, animal board tells HC
Mohamed Imranullah S.
CHENNAI 06 OCTOBER 2020 01:04 IST
UPDATED: 06 OCTOBER 2020 01:04 IST

The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) on Monday told the Madras High Court that it had issued an advisory “hastily” to the Chief Secretaries of all the States and Union Territories on August 23, 2019, asking them to close down slaughterhouses during the Jain festival of Paryushan Parva.

It told a Division Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and M.S. Ramesh that following the 2019 circular, one of the members of the AWBI, Girish B. Shah, made a request through WhatsApp for issuing a similar circular this year too. He cited a judgment passed by the Supreme Court on March 14, 2008, to back his plea for closing slaughterhouses. Pursuant to his request, a note was put up before AWBI secretary Sujit Kumar Dutta by attaching the 2019 circular issued by his predecessor. He ordered issuance of a similar circular to the Chief Secretaries of all the States and Union Territories on August 6 this year too, Additional-Solicitor General R. Sankaranarayanan told the court.

However, after the issuance of the circular this year, the AWBI secretary was bombarded with representations from organisations to order the closure of slaughterhouses for a period of 18 days since the Shwetambar sect in the Jain community celebrates Paryushan Parva for the first eight days and the Digambar sect for the next 10 days. It was only after being confronted with multiple representations that the AWBI secretary examined the 2008 Supreme Court judgment and found that it applied to the Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad and not to the whole country. “It became clear beyond any reason of doubt that in 2019, the AWBI was deliberately misguided and persuaded to issue such an advisory, after a gap of almost 11 years of the Supreme Court judgment, by a specific sect of people,” the AWBI’s counter affidavit read. The AWBI wrote to the Chief Secretaries again on August 11 this year, informing them about the withdrawal of the August 6 circular.

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The counter was filed in response to a writ petition filed by the Madurai North Indian Welfare Association for closing slaughter shops in Tamil Nadu during Paryushan Parva. The Bench led by Justice Kothari had called for an explanation from the AWBI. After perusing the counter on Monday, the judge felt such circulars appeared to have been issued even before 2019. He directed the board to submit all original files related to the issue by October 15.

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