Case Comment On Animal Welfare Board Of India & Ors. V. Union Of India & Anr. (2023) 9 SCC 322

Chandrala Srikanth Katte, School of Law, CHRIST (Deemed-to-be) University

Coram: K.M. Joseph J, Ajay Rastogi J, Aniruddha Bose J, Hrishikesh Roy J, C.T. Ravikumar J

Background and Facts

Animals' rights and treatment have always been a matter of solicitude. Animal rights is a concept about protecting the lives of non-human motile beings and recognizing their moral values. Several sects of people practicing Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism consider the unnecessary hurting of animals as bad karma or sin. With the inception of the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1861, some awareness was created in the minds of those who ill-treated animals and profited largely from this. Several legislations including the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 that established the Animal Welfare Board of India helped place regulations on the use and experimentation of animals in the country.

The case at hand questions the rights of animals used in the games of Kambala and Jallikattu- traditional, bovine sports that are widely practiced in the south-Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Jallikattu involves a group of people attempting to grab the hump of a bull’s back and bring the bull to a halt while Kambala is an annual buffalo race where pairs of buffalo race against each other in slushy-muddy waters. In 2006, due to the death of a spectator, the Madras High Court banned Jallikattu. However, the ban was lifted by the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009 with a special caution that unnecessary harm should not be inflicted upon bulls. This Act was further challenged by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) as it was found that the ordered rules and regulations were being disobeyed. In 2014, the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu and Kambala in the case of A. Nagaraja. It held that these events caused unnecessary pain and harm to bulls. The court further held that Jallikattu and Kambala violated the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 (PCA). This was undone by a January 2016 notification which allowed the practice but with several stringent restrictions. Following widespread protests in Tamil Nadu, the Tamil Nadu Government came up with its amendment which exempted the Jallikattu from the PCA. Similar amendments were made by the Karnataka and Maharashtra governments to conduct Kambala and Bailgada Sharyat in their respective states. This was contested by a group of animal rights activists who challenged the 2016 notification as well as the amendments made by the state legislatures. In 2018, the then CJI Deepak Misra and J. Rohinton Fali Nariman referred the matter to a 5 -5-judge bench to decide the constitutional permissibility of such acts.