Jamiat Halal Trust says solicitor general’s remarks on halal certification misleading

The Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind Halal Trust has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court challenging “misleading” remarks made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta regarding halal certification during the case’s last hearing on Uttar Pradesh’s ban on halal-certified products, reported Live Law on Monday.

The affidavit takes exception to Mehta’s statement that halal-certifying agencies make “few lakh crores” from the certification process and questions whether “the entire country should bear the brunt of costlier halal-certified products just because they are demanded by a few.”

The trust contended that these remarks have maligned the petitioners, leading to media debates that further vilified the halal certification process. “Unfortunately, the Central Government has made misleading submissions which has created serious prejudice to the concept of halal and enabled the prejudiced media to create a narrative against the very concept of Halal,” the affidavit states.

The petitioner has also sought a direction from the Supreme Court for the Centre to disclose which official instructed Mehta to make these statements, calling them “without any basis, inconsistent with the record and the pleadings sworn on oath by public officials”.

The trust argued that halal certification is “a serious issue of religious belief and practice” protected under Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution, which deal with religious freedoms.

The trust asserted...

Read more