Want a pet? Get licence first

Very soon, you will need a license to own a pet, whose well-being will be regularly inspected by government officials. If your pet is found to be in bad health, the officials will have powers to confiscate them.

Updated on: May 8, 2010, 01:12:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Very soon, you will need a license to own a pet, whose well-being will be regularly inspected by government officials. If your pet is found to be in bad health, the officials will have powers to confiscate them.

In the new draft rules for pet shops, the environment ministry has made license for each species of pet mandatory and allowed sale of only sterilised pets, except where a veterinary doctor allows. “The license will be valid only for 12 months,” the rules said.

However, the pet owner would be able to obtain the license directly from the local authorities or with the help of the pet shop owners, who will have to take a license to operate. Government officials will have the right to inspect the pets at regular intervals.

“It is a positive step,” said Poorva Joshipura, chief of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals India, in an email response to HT.

The rules, to be implemented jointly by local municipal bodies and Animal Welfare Board of India, prescribe air-conditioned living for pets up for sale. “The ambient temperature for animal dwelling are shall remain between 25-30°C and humidity below 50 per cent,” the draft rules notified for inviting objections this week said.

That’s not all. The rules prescribe standards of living for different species of animals and birds and the level of hygiene the shop owners will have to wait. A minimum of 24 sq feet area will have to be demarcated for a large dog and 12 sq feet for a large cat. Rules also cover the food that each species should get daily. Each pet shop will have to employ a doctor.

The rules also prohibit pet shops near butcher shops and require labelling on the health of the animals or birds for sale.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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