M’rashtra put on notice over beef ban petition

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, August 17

The Supreme Court today issued a notice to the Maharashtra Government, seeking its response to a petition for banning the sale of beef in that state.

A Bench comprising Justices AK Sikri and DY Chandrachud directed the state government to file its response in six weeks to an appeal by the Akhil Bharat Krishi Goseva Sangh, challenging the Bombay High Court’s May 6 judgment upholding people’s right to choose their food.

In the same judgment, the HC also upheld the ban on slaughter of bovine animals in Maharashtra. The HC clarified that it implied that the people of Maharashtra could eat beef brought from other states, where slaughter was allowed, or imported from other countries.

Some slaughterhouses and individuals in that state have also come to the Supreme Court, challenging the HC verdict upholding the ban on slaughter of cows, buffalos and bullocks. This petition is likely to be listed for hearing next week.

The HC ruling came on petitions pertaining to the validity of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976, as amended in 1995.

The petitioners pleading for lifting the slaughter ban contended that the HC had upheld the law against killing of even old bovine animals, ignoring the fact that the farmers were incurring heavy losses on keeping them alive though they were neither yielding milk nor useful in agricultural work.

The ban violated people’s right to have access to inexpensive source of protein from the meat of bull and bullock which was also the staple diet of most of them. The HC had also failed to assess the competing claims of the meat-eating population and that of farmers.

Instead of furthering the interests of the farmers, the ban was actually harming them by creating an additional burden on the scarce resources of water and fodder, they pleaded.