The Allahabad High Court’s order directing the Uttar Pradesh government to issue new licences for meat shops and slaughterhouses and renew old ones has come as a “relief” for those involved in the meat business in the State.
Meat traders are now preparing to go to court to demand relaxation of norms in the Food Safety Act under which they are to be issued licences. They want mosques to be excluded from the list of religious places less than 50 metres of which meat shops are prohibited from functioning.
Apart from the clause of “minimum distance” of 50 metres, the FSA guidelines prevent meat shops from running within 100 metres of the main gate of religious places. The norms are as per clause 8 (1) of the Food Safety & Standard Administration India Act, 2011.
Meat traders say the specific clause is hindering them from getting their licences renewed. Their licences expired on March 31. Saleem Qureshi, the Bareilly district president of the All India Jamiatul Quresh (AIJQ), would soon file a petition in the Allahabad High Court making this demand.
Denied licence
As hundreds of meat traders across U.P. are facing the issue, the AIJQ would raise in court the predicament of Bareilly resident Sharif Qureshi, who despite completing all formalities, was denied licence for his meat shop as it was situated near the Ansariyan Masjid Zakhira Qila mosque.
Shakeel Quresh, UP vice-president of the All India Jamiatul Quresh, said “since most of the meat shops in U.P. are located in dense Muslim areas with mosques in proximity,” meat traders are being denied licences for this reason. “Our religion does not prohibit us from selling meat near mosques or eating it there.
Many shops are located in mosques complexes. We will fully abide by the sanctity of other religious sites like temples, churches, gurudwaras but only demand a relaxation for mosques,” Mr. Shakeel Qureshi told The Hindu .
He further said that meat shops had also obtained no objection letters from the trustees of the mosques. “The High Court order is a relief measure for us. But we would be filing a separate petition praying for the exclusion of mosques from the prohibited places,” he said.
Ramzan approaching
The AIJQ, a representative body of the Qureshis, the Muslim community traditionally associated with the meat trade, also hopes that State officials will start issuing licences to slaughterhouses and meat shops soon as the Muslim holy month of Ramzan is approaching.
“The demand will shoot up and it could even lead to a law and order problem,” Mr. Shakeel Qureshi said.
He also expressed disappointment with the “hotchpotch” functioning of local bodies in U.P. and said it was posing a hurdle for meat traders to obtain licences. “The CM had promised us that he would get our licences done soon but the officials have hardly cared. They push us from one door to another. So far, not a single licence has been issued for meat shops in Lucknow. There have been only ten in Kanpur, and only 50 out of 550 in Bareilly,” Mr. Shakeel Qureshi said.
He added that the officials rejected meat sellers requesting licences citing the pending case in the court, whereas the case had no bearing on the issuance of licences if meat traders followed norms.
AIJQ national president Siraj Qureshi is also expected to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath to put forward the inconveniences and livelihood crisis faced by the State’s meat traders since March.
The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday directed the State government to start issuing fresh licences and no-objection certificates (NOC) to meat traders while also renewing their old licences.
The court also rejected the government’s contention that slaughterhouses were not the responsibility of the State and said that the responsibility of constructing slaughter houses was that of the local municipal corporations.
