Summary
In 2004, the court heard a case related to the transportation of cows from one province to another. The case was made due to the violation of restriction on the export of cows for meat slaughter. The judge found that the defendant had violated the Punjab Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act. The petitioners filed an appeal, which was denied.
Since the incident took place in 2004, the case was appealed and faced criminal proceedings for about 15 years. In 2019, the petition that filed in the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, where the High Court Judge Rajiv Sharma declared that “the entire animal kingdom including avian and aquatic are declared as legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person” and declared all citizens throughout the state persons in loco parentis as the human face for welfare/protection of animals. The ruling is still in effect.
Jurisprudential Framing
The court ruling explicitly references anthropocentrism and “Nature’s own rights”. It notes that recent multinational instruments have asserted the intrinsic value of nature– such as the UNEP Biodiversity Convention (1992) and World Charter for Nature – and that rights of animals, based on ecocentric principles, have been recognized in various countries, such as The Animal Welfare Act, 2010 (Norway) which states: “Animals have an intrinsic value which is irrespective of the usable value they may have for man.”
The judge explains that India’s “TNRJ Act, 2009 is an anthropocentric legislation enacted not for the welfare of the animals, unlike the PCA Act, which is an ecocentric legislation, enacted to ensure the wellbeing and welfare of the animals and to prevent unnecessary pain or suffering of the animals.” The judge goes on to note that “We have accepted and applied the ecocentric principles in T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India and in Centre for Environmental Law, World Wide Fund-India v. Union of India. The judge contends that animals can be considered legal persons with a guardian to represent their rights, and that there is no conceptual problem with providing this legal status.
The high courts of India are the highest courts of jurisdiction in each state and union territory of India. All courts in India, including high courts, are bound by the judgements and orders of the Supreme Court of India.
Related Initiatives
Suggested Citation:
Kauffman, Craig, Catherine Haas, Alex Putzer, Shrishtee Bajpai, Kelsey Leonard, Elizabeth Macpherson, Pamela Martin, Alessandro Pelizzon & Linda Sheehan. Eco Jurisprudence Monitor. V2. 2025. Distributed by the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor.https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/singh-et-al-v-state-of-haryana/.
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