Overview

• Municipal corporations in Kalyan-Dombivli, Nagpur, Nashik, Malegaon, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Hyderabad ordered slaughterhouses and licensed meat shops closed from midnight August 14–15, with Hyderabad extending the ban through Janmashtami under a 1988 government resolution.
• The Maharashtra ruling coalition fractured over the directives after BJP leaders defended the closures citing the 1988 resolution and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar criticized the bans, while Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis emphasized that no new state policy was adopted.
• Opposition figures including Asaduddin Owaisi, Aaditya Thackeray and NCP MLA Jitendra Awhad decried the closures as unconstitutional food policing and demanded municipal commissioners’ suspensions and symbolic protests such as ‘mutton parties.’
• Butcher associations and rights groups have filed or signaled petitions in the Telangana High Court and elsewhere, invoking Supreme Court precedents on the right to privacy and dietary choice under Article 21 to contest the orders.
• Police and civic flying squads in affected cities have been placed on high alert under the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act, 1949, with prohibitory orders issued as authorities prepare for potential demonstrations and unauthorized meat sales.