New Delhi: The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has been pushed out of a committee that regulates experiments on animals in the country.

Infuriated by the move, AWBI chairman Maj Gen (retd) R.M. Kharb has written to the environment ministry, asking it to take urgent steps to restore the body to the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA), pointing out that the committee had been formed on the board’s advice.

The AWBI and the Prakash Javadekar-led environment ministry have been at loggerheads since early January when the latter came out with a notification that allowed jallikattu, a bull-taming sport, to be played in Tamil Nadu.

Unhappy with the move, the AWBI and animal rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India and the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations moved the Supreme Court, which stayed the notification.

Miffed with the AWBI for opposing its decision to allow jallikattu in Tamil Nadu, where assembly elections are due this month, the ministry issued a show-cause notice to the board on 28 March to explain its decision to approach the apex court.

But the AWBI stood its ground and, in its reply on 6 April, told the ministry that it was forced to approach the apex court for a stay on jallikattu as the ministry had disregarded its opinion.

The exclusion of the AWBI from CPCSEA has only added to the tension. The former is a statutory advisory body on animal welfare under the ministry.

“I have just been informed by a board member about the AWBI’s expulsion from CPCSEA. We are very surprised by this action. The removal is unexpected and inexplicable," read Kharb’s letter to the ministry on Monday.

The objective of CPCSEA, a committee under the ministry, is to ensure that animals are not subjected to unnecessary pain or suffering before, during or after performance of experiments on them. The chairman of the AWBI was removed in February.

A senior environment ministry official, who did not wish to be identified, admitted that the move was a fallout of the AWBI opposing the jallikattu notification in the Supreme Court.

“What’s the point of having them in CPCSEA when they have to oppose us on everything? Anyway, there is nothing in the rules which makes the presence of AWBI in the committee mandatory," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Kharb, in his letter dated 2 May, reviewed by Mint, demanded to know the reasons for AWBI’s removal from the committee. “Since animal welfare is an important component of the functions and objectives of the CPCSEA, we would like to know the considerations that led to the issuance of the latter notification through which the board was excluded from representation in the CPCSEA," he wrote.

Kharb said the reason they were most “taken aback" with the development was because “the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, clearly states that the very committee itself is formed on the board’s advice".

The AWBI chairman urged the ministry to take “urgent steps to ensure that the board is represented again in the committee".

In April, AWBI member N.G. Jayasimha had moved the Supreme Court, seeking the quashing of the show-cause notice issued by the ministry.

In his petition, Jayasimha had sought a directive from the apex court to the ministry to take no coercive steps against the AWBI and to let it complete its full term till February 2017.

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