Mixed woofs for rules to help pets

Your Golden Retriever is likely to beat you in the race for a unique identification number. That's not all.

Updated on: Jun 15, 2010, 01:11:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Your Golden Retriever is likely to beat you in the race for a unique identification number. That's not all.

If states adopt the Union environment ministry’s new rules “to improve the living condition of pet dogs”, you will be breaking a law by subjecting your pet to temperatures over 29.5 degrees Celsius.

The rules notified under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 also prohibit incest or inter-species breeding. Eighteen months has been prescribed as the minimum age of breeding but only after a vet recommends it.

Animal rights groups, the pressure group that forced the ministry to formulate the rules in the first place to “curb inhuman treatment of dogs and puppies at breeding centres”, claim local bodies would struggle to implement the norms.

“We will get beaten up. Nobody will allow us to enter homes to inspect the well-being of pets,” a Municipal Corporation of Delhi official said on the condition of anonymity.

Another rule states keeping a pet would be allowed only after the local body provides the unique id number.

Animal consultants claim while some rules would allow authorities to harass individual pet owners, others are simply impractical.

“The intention is good but will the government terminate a pregnancy in case of a multi-species breeding,” asked Demetrius Issac, chief consultant of Chennai-based Peagasus Animal Consultancy.

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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