India’s Supreme Court has stayed an order by the Madras High Court that banned the slaughter of cows and calves in Tamil Nadu on Eid-ul-Azha or any other day. Granting the stay on Monday (July 13), the top court noted that the High Court’s earlier order had needed modification.
The decision came after the Tamil Nadu government, led by Chief Minister Thalapathy Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the Madras High Court’s verdict of May 27. Challenging the High Court order, the state government argued in court that where existing legal provisions in the country allowed the slaughter of certain categories of cattle in certain places, no judicial directive contrary to that provision of law could be upheld in any way.
Earlier, a division bench of the Madras High Court comprising Justice GR Swaminathan and Justice V Lakshminarayanan had ordered a statewide ban on cow slaughter, based on a 1976 government order. That order had been issued at the time mainly in the interest of increasing milk production and developing the rural economy. In support of the High Court verdict, Justice Swaminathan noted that, under Article 48 of the constitution, states should take effective steps to ban the slaughter of cows, calves and other milch cattle. Drawing on the constituent assembly debates, he also noted that the cow had been regarded as a revered animal in Indian civilization since ancient times.
Against the ban, however, leaders of various religious and social communities argued that restricting animal sacrifice during a religious festival such as Eid-ul-Azha to only government-licensed slaughterhouses was entirely unrealistic, because these slaughterhouses did not have enough capacity to meet the huge demand on festival days. The Tamil Nadu government also made its position clear to the court, saying that the “Tamil Nadu Animal Preservation Act” and other existing rules did strictly regulate the place and conditions of slaughter, but did not impose any blanket, complete ban.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report