The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down the request of the Tamil Nadu Government to allow the famous bull-taming sport of Jallikattu that was banned by a court order on May 7, 2014.
Hearing a plea by the State Government to review its earlier decision, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Rohington F Nariman said, there shall be no change in its earlier order of banning the use of bulls in Jallikattu and other bullock cart races across the country.
Reaffirming its earlier position, the bench said that taming of bulls for events such as Jallikattu amounts to cruelty to animals. The review petition of Tamil Nadu was filed in 2014. Senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, who represented the State, had submitted that Jallikattu is not cruel as a whole, and instances of animal torture are isolated cases.
Interestingly, the Centre had issued a notification on January 8 this year lifting the ban on Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and allowed the sport to be held under restrictions. The court had stayed the said notification forcing the State Government to file a review petition. A similar set of review pleas filed by certain residents of Tamil Nadu was dismissed by the apex court on January 21 this year.
Jallikattu, also known as Eruthazhuvuthal, is a bull-taming sport played in Tamil Nadu as a part of the Pongal harvest festival. The court had in its 2014 judgment said that bulls cannot be used as performing animals, either for Jallikattu events or bullock-cart races, which are primarily held in the states of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. The apex court had declared Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009 as unconstitutional and violative of Article 254(1) of the Constitution.
The sport Jallikattu had earned the ire of the court after animal rights activists approached the court with evidence to suggest how bulls were tortured in order to incite them to violence and increase the entertainment value of the event. The bull is let into an arena with men surrounding it in an attempt to gain hold of its horn. The activists showed video evidence to suggest how chilli powder is rubbed on the private part of the bulls to make them ferocious. Many persons died in the process.