BJP MP Kirit Somaiya Urges Mumbai Authorities to Prohibit Goat Sacrifices in Residential Towers During Bakri Eid

In the days preceding the festival of Eid al‑Adha, municipal authorities in the metropolis of Mumbai have been confronted with a spate of petitions urging the prohibition of goat sacrifice within the confines of high‑rise residential complexes, a practice alleged to contravene both sanitary codes and communal tranquillity. The appellant, identified as Shri Kirit Somaiya, a representative of the Bharatiya Janata Party and former legislator, addressed his entreaty directly to the Municipal Commissioner, the Mayor of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, and the Commissioner of Police, invoking the responsibilities incumbent upon each office to safeguard public health, order, and the city’s reputation. He contended that the perfunctory allowance of animal slaughter within densely packed towers not only flouts the building by‑laws promulgated under the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act, but also invites the spectre of zoonotic disease and engenders an atmosphere of discord amongst the city’s heterogeneous populace.

The Municipal Corporation, whose charter obliges it to enforce the Maharashtra Building Rules of 2021, stipulates that any agricultural or zoological activity within multi‑storey edifices shall be prohibited unless a specific exemption is granted by the chief engineer, an exemption that, to the best of public knowledge, has never been formally issued for the purpose of religious animal sacrifice. Moreover, the Fire Services Department has repeatedly warned that the combustion of kerosene lamps and open flames in proximity to animal pens constitutes a flagrant violation of fire safety provisions and could precipitate conflagrations that would imperil not only the immediate dwellings but also the surrounding neighbourhoods.

In prior years, the municipal grievance cell received numerous complaints from tenants reporting foul odours, accumulation of animal waste in stairwells, and unregulated disposal of entrails, yet the official response remained characteristically vague, citing a pending “inter‑departmental coordination” that has yet to materialise in any substantive directive. A police report filed in March 2026 documented that several attempts by the local enforcement squad to intervene in unsanctioned sacrificial rites were rebuffed by building management committees invoking the right to religious freedom, thereby placing the police in a procedurally untenable position between statutory duty and constitutional accommodation.

Residents of the affected towers, a cross‑section of middle‑class families and migrant workers, have described an untenable degradation of indoor air quality, exacerbated by the concurrent monsoon season, which renders ventilation systems less effective and amplifies the risk of respiratory ailments among children and the elderly. Furthermore, the municipal sanitation brigade has reported a surge in the volume of organic waste collected from these precincts, a surge that strains already overburdened waste‑processing facilities and threatens to culminate in public health emergencies should the piles remain unprocessed beyond the statutory fortnightly clearance schedule.

The conspicuous absence of a transparent licensing mechanism for animal slaughter within residential buildings, combined with the ambiguous delegation of oversight to both the health department and the police, engenders a regulatory vacuum that permits ad‑hoc decisions devoid of accountability or public scrutiny. Consequently, the municipal legal counsel has offered no definitive guidance on the applicability of the Maharashtra Animal Husbandry Authority’s regulations, leaving municipal engineers and police officials to interpret by reference to antiquated statutes whose relevance to contemporary urban living remains questionable.

Does the present configuration of municipal authority, which disperses responsibility for animal sacrifice across the health, fire, and law‑enforcement divisions, constitute an unlawful delegation of power that contravenes the principle of clear administrative accountability mandated by the Indian Constitution? In what manner should the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation reconcile its statutory duty to enforce the Maharashtra Building Rules with the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, when the latter is invoked to justify practices that potentially infringe upon public health and safety codified in separate legislative instruments? Should a definitive procedural framework be instituted whereby any request for animal sacrifice within multi‑storey dwellings is subject to a public hearing, an environmental impact assessment, and a written order from a designated municipal officer, thereby furnishing an evidentiary trail that could be scrutinised by aggrieved parties and judicial bodies alike? Might the allocation of municipal funds for the removal and disposal of animal remains be justified as an exigent public‑service expense, or does it instead reveal a systemic neglect that obliges taxpayers to shoulder costs arising from administrative indecision and inadequate pre‑emptive regulation?

Is the current practice of delegating the inspection of animal sacrifice sites to police officers, whose primary training pertains to criminal law rather than sanitary engineering, an infringement of the procedural safeguards required for the protection of public health as spelled out in the National Health Policy? Would the establishment of a municipal ordinance expressly prohibiting animal slaughter within tenements exceeding a prescribed floor area, coupled with a penalty schedule calibrated to the severity of infractions, not furnish a clear legal standard that could preclude the reliance on ad‑hoc ministerial instructions? Might the integration of a transparent digital grievance portal, wherein complainants can track the status of their petitions and receive timely written responses from the relevant municipal department, enhance accountability and diminish the perception of bureaucratic inertia that presently plagues residents? Finally, does the failure to publicly disclose the criteria employed by municipal officials in granting or denying permits for animal sacrifice constitute a breach of the Right to Information Act, thereby denying citizens the evidentiary foundation necessary to challenge arbitrary administrative conduct in a court of law?

Published: May 18, 2026

Published: May 18, 2026