Ban on sale of cattle for slaughter: Chennai protest, Rajasthan HC wants cow as national animal and more

Police in Chennai lodge cases against organisers of beef fest, students protest outside IIT Madras, and Tripura decides to defy central rule on stopping sale of cattle for meat.

Updated on: May 31, 2017, 17:34:40 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A notification announced last week banning sale of cattle for slaughter has triggered nationwide controversy with state governments, political parties and members of the public protesting the order that is being seen as an attempt by the Union government to control consumption of beef.

Criticism continued to pour in over a Union government notification last week banning cattle markets from where cows and buffalos are bought for slaughterhouses. (AP FILE PHOTO)

Seven developments on Wednesday:

1) The Rajasthan high court said cow should be declared the national animal and asked the state government to make slaughtering cows punishable with life imprisonment. The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) on death of cows in government-run Hingonia, near Jaipur, in 2016.

2) The Kerala high court said the Centre’s notification banning sale of cattle in animal markets has not banned sale of beef. The court said there was nothing in the new rule that takes away the right of people with regard to eating beef.

3) Pro-Left student bodies in Chennai staged a protest outside IIT Madras, condemning an attack on Tuesday on a PhD scholar who took part in a beef festival on the campus. They claimed R Sooraj was beaten up at the behest of right-wing Hindu groups.

4) Chennai police lodged two police cases, one against nine students who assaulted Sooraj and another against those who organised the beef festival. On basis of a complaint filed by the assaulters, Sooraj was booked for causing hurt and wrongful restrain.

Police personnel try to control a protest by the Students Federation of India(SFI) in Chennai on Wednesday. (HT Photo)

5) The DMK also held protests in Tamil Nadu’s capital city, saying times are such that “we should eat only what the prime minister desires”. MK Stalin warned of another “Marina revolution”, a reference to the mass protests against the ban on animal-taming sport Jallikattu, if the notification was not withdrawn.

6) Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan condemned the attack on Sooraj and asked Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami to take necessary action.

7) The Tripura government said it will not implement the Centre’s ban on sale of cattle for slaughter as it is “against interest of people”. Tripura became the fourth state after Kerala, Karnataka and Bengal to reject the Centre’s ban.

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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