The Supreme Court has declared that animals have a right to protect their life and dignity from human excesses
In recent years, the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of animals and birds to lead a life of “intrinsic worth, honour and dignity,” even at the cost of popular faith and practices of human beings.
The starting point of the trend dates back to May 7, 2014 — the day of pronouncement of the judgment banning jallikattu, a bull-taming sport practised in Tamil Nadu.
In Animal Welfare Board of India versus A. Nagaraja, the Supreme Court historically extended the fundamental right to life to animals. It held that bulls have the fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution to live in a healthy and clean atmosphere, not to be beaten, kicked, bitten, tortured, plied with alcohol by humans or made to stand in narrow enclosures amidst bellows and jeers from crowds. In short, the Supreme Court declared that animals have a right to protect their life and dignity from human excesses.
Article 21, till then, had been confined to only human life and dignity. In May 2014, with its jallikattu verdict, the Supreme Court Bench of Justice (as he was then) K.S. Radhakrishnan and Justice P.C. Ghose stretched the fundamental right to include “every species.”
Since May 2014, the court has heard a flood of cases dealing with the rights of the animal world ranging from bulls, elephants, horses, dogs, roosters to even exotic birds.
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