Meat ban unravels: Bombay HC stays prohibition on sale of meat on 17 September

After nearly a week of some of the strangest protests the city of Mumbai has seen — hurling eggs and releasing roosters at jewellery shops , setting up meat stalls outside Jain housing societies and selling meat on the streets of Dadar — the Bombay High Court has stayed the ban on the sale of meat on 17 September. The High Court has observed that such bans cannot be imposed suddenly and dates ‘must be fixed in advance’. However, it has refused to stay the ban on slaughter of animals on that date. [caption id=“attachment_2432814” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] The ruling comes on the back of a petition filed by the Bombay Mutton Dealers’ Association on 10 September that stated that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) actions ‘violated Article 14 of the Constitution of India, 1950’. A division bench headed by Justice Anoop Mohta that was hearing the petition had said that “Mumbai is a metropolitan city. Such straight ban on meat cannot be a formula”. The story so far The BMC, on 8 September, announced that in light of letters from ‘several Jain organisations’, the sale of meat and slaughter of animals would be verboten on 10, 13, 17 and 18 September — during which the community observes Paryushan. A senior civic official had said at the time that the BMC’s “market department has been asked to enforce the ban and ensure no animal is slaughtered and no meat is sold anywhere in the city”. And while the BJP — in power at the BMC — welcomed the ban, the Shiv Sena —its alliance partner —and the NCP and Congress that sit in the Opposition, vehemently opposed it. On the first day of the ban, the Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena took the streets to protest the ban by selling meat in the streets of Dadar. In the face of growing agitation and sharp criticism, the civic body revoked the bans scheduled for 13 and 18 September in Mumbai, last Friday. Oddly, the BJP that had supported the ban only three days earlier, had done a volte face and backed the proposal to revoke the ban. Not that this stopped NCP leader Jitendra Awhad from postulating about what was going on behind the scenes. Avhad told PTI at the time that “(t)his ban was issued on instruction of the chief minister. It was a gameplan between the government and the MCGM Commissioner who bypassed the norms. Therefore, Sena should bring a no-confidence motion against the Commissioner for having undermined the status of the general body of the BMC”. Whether or not this revocation of the meat ban spreads to the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation and Mira-Bhayander Municipal Corporation that are midway through eight-day bans on the slaughter of animals and sale of meat, remains to be seen.