PIL that led to J&K beef ban filed by the state’s Deputy Advocate General

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Law experts say that Seth was supposed to withdraw the PIL soon after taking over as deputy advocate general of the state.

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J&K Law Secretary, Ashraf Mir told The Indian Express that Seth was not holding the post of the Law officer when he had filed this particular PIL. “We are looking into it. May be he (Seth) withdraws the petition.’’ Mir, however, said that he could not say whether any action could be initiated against the Law officer. “Any action against the Law Officer could be taken only by the J&K’s Law Minister.’’

Parimoksh Seth is the son of senior BJP leader Onkar Seth, who spearheaded the launch of Jammu State Morcha with active support of RSS, to raise the demand for a separate Jammu State.

National Conference provincial president and former MoS Home, Nasir Wani said that the government should come clean on the issue that has divided the state on communal lines. “Either the Law Minister and his team of officials are incompetent or they are doing it deliberately to keep BJP and the RSS happy,’’ he said.

J&K State Congress vice-president and legislator, Ghulam Nabi Monga said that state’s Law Minister owes an explanation to the people how a deputy advocate general who was supposed to defend government cases pursued the PIL against the government. “This government is working at the behest of RSS, how is it possible that it was not in the knowledge of the Law Ministry that PIL has been filed by its own Law officer,’’ he said, adding that Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed should come up with a statement on this sensitive issue.

On Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had ordered the Director General of Police (DGP) to strictly enforce the sale of beef across the state. The directions, which came from a division bench of Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur and Justice Janak Raj Kotwal over a public interest litigation followed the observation that “the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, has not filed an appropriate response regarding the smuggling and slaughtering of bovine animals and subsequently their sale in Kashmir Valley’’.

The slaughter of bovines and sale of beef is banned in Jammu and Kashmir since the pre-Partition era when the then princely state was ruled by the Dogra rulers. In the Dogra era, the ban was strictly enforced across the state, after elected governments took over; there was a relaxation in the sale of beef. While the slaughter of bovines and the sale of beef were strictly banned in the Hindu majority areas of Jammu, beef was sold at many places in Muslim majority Kashmir.