{"id":1861,"date":"2019-06-21T05:22:24","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T05:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2019-07-07T04:06:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T04:06:27","slug":"high-court-declared-all-animals-in-haryana-to-be-legal-persons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/high-court-declared-all-animals-in-haryana-to-be-legal-persons\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court declared all animals in Haryana to be &#8216;legal persons&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Punjab and Haryana High Court has\nruled that animals in Haryana will be accorded the status of \u201clegal person or\nentity\u201d and declared all citizens \u2018persons in loco parentis\u2019 (in place of a\nparent or guardian) to promote welfare of animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The order grants animals in Haryana\n\u201ccorresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person\u201d. The verdict\ncomes nearly a year after Uttarakhand High Court passed a similar order \u201cto\nprotect and promote greater welfare of animals\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The order was passed by Justice Rajiv\nSharma, who was transferred from Uttarakhand to the Punjab and Haryana High\nCourt at Chandigarh last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLive and let live,\u201d Justice Sharma said in the 104-page order. Justice Sharma was also part of the Bench in Uttarakhand that had declared\u00a0rivers Ganga and Yamuna as living entities\u00a0in 2017. The verdict, however, was stayed by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Justice Sharma ruled that animals had a\nright to life and bodily integrity, honour and dignity, and could not be\ntreated merely as property. \u201cThe corporations, Hindu idols, holy scriptures,\nrivers have been declared legal entities and thus, in order to protect and\npromote greater welfare of animals including avian and aquatic, animals are\nrequired to be conferred with the status of legal entity\/legal person,\u201d he\nstated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Justice Sharma said that animals might\nbe mute but \u201cwe as a society have to speak on their behalf\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe animals should be healthy,\ncomfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior without\npain, fear and distress. They are entitled to justice. The animals cannot be\ntreated as objects or property,\u201d the verdict reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The single Bench of Justice Sharma also\nfixed load to be carried by animals and banned their deployment for pulling\nvehicles in extreme weather conditions. The Haryana government must ensure that\nno person was permitted to keep in harness any animal to draw vehicles between\n11 am and 4 pm in summers when temperature exceeded 37 degrees Celsius, and\nbetween 10 pm and 7 am when the temperature fell below 5 degrees Celsius in\nwinter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of spike sticks, harness, knobs\nand other sharp instruments were also banned. Animals carrying load are to be\ncovered with reflectors for identification at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>High Court has issued 29 animal-welfare oriented\ndirections.&nbsp;&nbsp;This includes<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>a ban in using animals to pull vehicles in extreme weather,<\/li><li>limits on loads and the number of people that animals are made to carry,<\/li><li>limits on the distances that an animal is made to walk at a stretch,<\/li><li>instructions on how to tether an animal to the vehicle it is made to pull and a ban on the use of spike sticks,<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p> harness and other sharp instruments to avoid injuring the animal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that animals in Haryana will be accorded the status of \u201clegal person or entity\u201d and declared all citizens \u2018persons in loco parentis\u2019 (in place of a parent or guardian) to promote welfare of animals. The order grants animals in Haryana \u201ccorresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"offerexpiration","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/offerexpiration?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}