Ownership Certificates, Trophies and the Ban on Trade

In one line

Chapter V licenses a trade; Chapter VA abolishes it for scheduled animals, and the certificate of ownership is what is left for the person who already had the thing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 44 forbids commencing or carrying on business as a manufacturer of or dealer in an animal article, a taxidermist, a dealer in a trophy or uncured trophy, a dealer in captive animals, a dealer in meat, or cooking or serving meat in an eating-house, or dealing in snake venom, except under a licence; and section 49B then provides that on and after the specified date no person shall commence or carry on any of those businesses in relation to a scheduled animal, and that no licence granted under section 44 before that date entitles anybody to carry it on afterwards.

Declaration and certificate

Section 40(1). Every person having at the commencement of the Act the control, custody or possession of a captive animal specified in Schedule I, or an animal article, trophy or uncured trophy derived from such an animal, or salted or dried skins, or the musk of a musk deer, or the horn of a rhinoceros, had thirty days to declare to the Chief Wild Life Warden the number, description and place of keeping.

Section 40(2). After the commencement, nobody may acquire, receive, keep, sell, offer for sale, otherwise transfer or transport such an animal or article except with the previous permission in writing of the Chief Wild Life Warden or the authorised officer.

Section 40(2A), inserted in 2002. No person other than a person having a certificate of ownership shall acquire, receive or keep any captive animal, animal article, trophy or uncured trophy specified in Schedule I, except by way of inheritance. Section 40(2B): a person inheriting such a thing must declare it within ninety days, and sections 41 and 42 then apply. A proviso excludes the live elephant from both sub-sections.

Section 40(3): sub-sections (1) and (2) do not apply to a recognised zoo, subject to section 38I, or to a public museum. Section 40(4): the State Government may by notification require declarations of animals, animal articles, trophies or dried skins derived from an animal in Schedule I or Part II of Schedule II.

Section 40A, the amnesty. The Central Government may require declaration of things in respect of which no declaration had been made under section 40; any action taken for violation of section 40 before the 2002 amendment shall not be proceeded with and all pending proceedings stand abated; and things so declared are dealt with as prescribed.