Mumbai : The Bombay High Court on Thursday said it would start hearing from December 5 all the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the beef ban legislation in Maharashtra. A division bench of justices AS Oka and SC Gupte said it will hear the petitions on December 5, 9 and 11 and assign more dates, if required.
The bench had to be specially constituted by Acting Chief Justice V K Tahilramani after Justice Gautam Patel, who was presiding with Justice AS Oka, recused from hearing the petitions as he had written an article in a newspaper 2012 after the Karnataka government proposed a similar beef ban.
In February 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee had granted sanction to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the Act had banned slaughter of cows way back in 1976, the recent amendments prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks. The sale of bulls and bullocks in the state is also an offence punishable with five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine. Besides, possession of meat of a cow, meat of bull or bullock is also an offence for which the punishment prescribed is one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine. PTI
