No ban on animal slaughter in Haridwar on Bakr Eid: HC

Dehradun, July 08: The Uttarakhand High Court on Thursday stayed a state government order declaring the entire district of Haridwar as a slaughter-free area on July 10 when members of the Muslim community will be sacrificing animals to celebrate Bakr Eid.

A division bench of Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice R C Khulbe allowed the slaughter of animals for Eid al-Adha on July 10 at a slaughterhouse in the Manglaur municipality in the district.

The bench has also directed the intervenor to ensure that no slaughtering is done outside the mentioned legally compliant slaughterhouses and urged the Manglaur Municipality to inform and persuade people to slaughter animals only in such slaughterhouses and not outside the same.

On March 3 last year, the state had declared all areas of Haridwar free from slaughterhouses and cancelled the NOCs issued to slaughterhouses.

Faisal Hussain, a Haridwar resident, approached the high court saying the blanket ban on the slaughter of animals goes against the right to privacy, the right to life, and the right to freely practice religion and discriminated against Muslims in Haridwar where towns like Manglaur have a substantial Muslim population.

The petition claimed the ban was "arbitrary and unconstitutional". The petition challenged this for two reasons: a blanket ban on the meat of any kind is unconstitutional, as is Section 237A that the Uttarakhand government had inserted into the Uttar Pradesh Municipalities Act, to give itself the power to declare an area under a municipal corporation, council or nagar panchayat as a slaughter-free zone.