CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is considering moving court to seek clarification on the recent Madras High Court order directing the state to ensure no cow or calf is slaughtered on Bakrid or on any other day, with officials flagging its ambiguity on whether it amounts to a blanket ban or merely restricts slaughter in public and unauthorised places.
Senior officials from multiple departments, including animal husbandry, told TNIE that the government is seeking legal opinion on the matter, particularly because the order appears to go beyond existing provisions of the TN Animal Preservation Act, 1958.
Section 4 of the Act permits slaughter under specific conditions, if the animal is over 10 years old and unfit for work and breeding, or permanently incapacitated due to injury, deformity or incurable disease.
The order was passed on Wednesday by a division bench of Justices G R Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan while hearing a PIL related to Bakrid sacrifices.
The bench also cited the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Rules, 2023, which restrict animal slaughter to designated and licensed slaughterhouses, and invoked Article 48 of the Constitution, which urges the state to prohibit the slaughter of cows and calves.
“The ambiguity is whether the court intended a complete ban on cow slaughter or whether the focus was only on preventing slaughter in public places and unauthorised facilities,” an official said.
A Greater Chennai Corporation official said the order had been communicated to assistant veterinary officers across zones, and that the corporation had approached the Advocate General’s office for clarification on whether operations could continue at its Perambur slaughterhouse, the only designated facility in the corporation for bovine slaughter.
Top police sources said that they had been given to understand that the ban under the present order was a blanket ban, though no cases have been registered so far after the order was passed.
An animal rights activist welcomed the order, but was sceptical about its implementation. “There have been similar court orders in the past, but they were never effectively implemented,” he said, alleging that even in official GCC slaughterhouses, most animals being slaughtered were below the legally permissible age of 10 years.
MMK president M H Jawahirullah criticised the ruling, saying it went against the spirit of Article 25 of the Constitution, which guarantees every citizen the right to practice, profess and propagate their religion.
He described the judgment as “painful” and said it interfered with a long-standing religious practice.
CPM state secretary P Shanmugam on Thursday objected to the court specifically mentioning Bakrid and restricting the slaughter of cow and calves. If the court intended to prohibit animal sacrifice in unauthorised places, the order should have applied uniformly to all animals, he said.
IUML leaders, however, told that since there was no widespread practice of slaughtering cows in Tamil Nadu, the order gave them little cause for concern for now.
(Inputs from Kumaresan S, Gautham Selvarajan and Nirupama Viswanathan @ Chennai)