The Biodiversity Conservation Council of India (BiCCI) has sought comprehensive amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, to enable the lawful use of certain Indian native cattle breeds in traditional, cultural or religious sports, and events like the ‘jallikattu’.
The council has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a draft of proposed amendments sought by them to the Act. Releasing the letter to the media on Tuesday, members of the Trust of BiCCI said ‘jallikattu’ had a recorded history of over 4,000 years. Expressing the hope that people in Tamil Nadu would be able to celebrate Pongal that in 2017 with ‘jallikattu’, the letter written by Karthikeya Sivasenapathy, managing trustee, BiCCI, requested the Indian government to remove bulls from the list of animals that could not be used as performing animals. He also sought a special law or amendment to the existing PCA Act to ensure that ‘jallikattu’, ‘bailgada’, ‘manjuvirattu’, ‘rekla’ and such races can be conducted in the future.
Pointing out that the Union government proposed to amend the Act only by introducing a new sub-clause (III) to Sec. 22, they said this alone was not sufficient to achieve the desired results. “The Supreme Court has categorically held that ‘jallikattu’ is violative of Sec. 3 and Sec. 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. Therefore, amendments to Sec. 11 are necessary to change the basis of the law, which led the Supreme Court to pass its earlier orders, in order to enable revive and conduct ‘jallikattu’,” according to the draft.
