Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/illegal-and-senseless-arvind-p-datar-4681949.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Illegal and senseless -Arvind P Datar | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Illegal and senseless -Arvind P Datar
-The Indian Express

The proposed total ban on cattle slaughter goes against Supreme Court decisions on the matter since 1959

Less than a week ago, the Central government notified rules, many of which are as unconstitutional as they are senseless: A person is prohibited from bringing any type of cattle to an animal market for sale for slaughter. First, why is it unconstitutional? The ban on slaughter of cattle was a politically sensitive issue even before the Constitution came into force in 1950. In the Constituent Assembly, a few members supported a total ban but Rev. Nichols Roy made a cogent argument opposing the move, pointing out the economic consequences of maintaining old and sickly cattle, and that a large number of people consumed beef.

In the end, a partial ban was included as part of the Directive Principles (which represent our constitutional goals) and Article 48 now reads: “The state shall endeavour to organise agricultural and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.”

Like prohibition, our political history is littered with repeated attempts to totally ban the slaughter of cattle. The validity of such an attempt was first considered in detail in 1959 in the famous Mohammed Hanif Quareshi case. After a detailed discussion on the economic merits and demerits of a total ban, the Supreme Court held that the ban on slaughter of all cows, and calves of cows and calves of buffaloes, male and female, was constitutionally valid but a total prohibition on the slaughter of she-buffaloes, breeding bulls and working buffaloes, irrespective of their age or usefulness, was unconstitutional. Such a ban violated the fundamental right to carry on business of about 2,00,000 butchers in Bihar alone. These persons were mostly Muslims and belonged to the Qureshi community. Significantly, the Supreme Court noted that large sections of Muslims, Christians and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes consumed beef. It also noted that the practice of creating camps to house old and useless cattle, called “gosadans”, was “not at all encouraging”.

Bihar and Uttar Pradesh did not give up. They amended their laws and permitted slaughter of cattle only after they were more than 20 years old. The laws introduced a host of complex regulatory restrictions which included an appeal to the District Animal Husbandry Officer. The butcher community again successfully moved the Supreme Court which referred to the “almost unanimous opinion of experts that after the age of 15, bulls, bullocks and buffaloes are no longer useful for breeding, draught and other purposes and whatever little use they may have then is greatly offset by the economic disadvantage of feeding and maintaining unserviceable cattle”.

After this decision in 1961, the next attempt at a total ban before the Supreme Court was also unsuccessful in 1969. Almost 30 years later, in 1996, another attempt by the Madhya Pradesh government to absolutely ban the slaughter of all bulls and bullocks was again held to be violative of the fundamental right of butchers to carry on their business under Article 19(1)(g). The Supreme Court held that it was “pained” at the successive attempts of the state of Madhya Pradesh to nullify Supreme Court decisions.

In 2005, a bench of seven judges upheld the total ban on slaughter of cow and cow-progeny and made a valiant but regrettable attempt to justify the ban on aged cattle, observing that cattle never became “useless”, at the most, they became “less useful”. The court pointed out that such cattle still gave dung and urine, which had wide-ranging utility from biogas to medicinal formulations. Whatever the merits of these arguments, the Supreme Court mercifully confined its judgment to upholding the total ban only to “cow and cow-progeny”.

The net result is that a total ban on all types of cattle in the latest notification is likely to be held as unconstitutional. It is difficult to comprehend how anyone could have drafted such a notification imposing a total ban in the teeth of a line of Supreme Court decisions from 1959. Or is it another attempt to draft a patently unconstitutional but politically convenient law and leave it to the courts to strike it down? One can always say: “See, we passed the law but these courts always come in our way”.

Please click here to read more.