Chennai: A day after a petition was filed before the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court to issue directions to the jallikattu organising committee to provide adequate safety measures to participating bulls and trainers before the event, Madurai District Collector S Natarajan today inspected the venue of the bull-embracing sport at Alanganallur.
Petitioner K M Thirupathy, an advocate who also rears jallikatu bulls, moved the court stating that there were no adequate measures behind the Vadivasal at Alanganallur, where the bulls were lined up before the event, leading to chaos.
He also claimed that the organising committee did not provide security and safety measures for bulls behind the Vadivasal. There were four important places during the event such as bulls entry point, bulls medical check up point by veterinary doctors, Vadivasal and bulls collection point, the petitioner stated.
He added that bulls and owners gathered without following queue system causing injury to bulls during the previous event.
Earlier, the High court also had passed directions to take proper steps to arrange space for stationing bulls prior to conducting jallikattu by issuing tokens and allotting sufficient space. These directions were not adhered to during last year’s jallikattu at Alanganallur on 17 January, according to the petitioner.
“There was not enough space for the bulls and the animals kept dashing against each other without breathing space and some of them were let out without proper medical check,” the petitioner stated.
Following this, the division bench comprising judges R Subbiah and B Pugalendhi admitted the petition and issued notice to the authorities on Thursday.