According to these rules, it will be compulsory for the owners of pet shops to get necessary permission from the notified agencies, including Animal Welfare Board of India. They also have to follow prescribed hygiene and breeding norms for running their business. Further, there will be provisions of strict penalty on the violation of these rules.

It is also learnt that these rules will have elaborative procedures for dogs and other pets breeding. It will prescribe age for breeding and start certain dos and don'ts to save the animals from various harmful practices like docking the tails of dogs, de-beaking birds and de-clawing of kittens.

Now these days, animal cruelty has become a global problem. These strict rules help in improving animal’s condition in countries. It is expected that these rules and regulations will bring in more humane practices in selling/ buying of pets. In addition, it will bring out undetected cash in the system. Owing to a licensing system, only authorized people can be involved in the breeding activities which are not enforced properly in the lack of regulatory mechanism.

In the past, animal rights activists had reported many occurrences of pet sale through e-commerce websites. Also, they had submitted plethora of representations to the law ministry and Law Commission of India, looking for their involvement in regulating pet business. India has lakhs of pet breeding centers and pet shops, and Delhi alone has about 450 pet shops across the city.

It is worth noting that the then UPA government had already framed draft rules in this regard in the year 2010, but two years later the law ministry had opined that these rules can’t be framed in absence of certain enabling powers which is predetermined under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

Recently, the Law Commission has taken suo-motu cognizance of this issue and advised the law ministry that the Union government has the power to make rules to perform the functions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.