A Division Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday (September 2, 2026) set aside a single judge’s direction that no temple in the State should acquire elephants anymore and that the State government must take a call on shifting all the existing elephants in captivity, both in temples and other private facilities, to government rehabilitation homes.

“However well-intentioned a court order may be, it cannot be sustained if it is passed against persons who were strangers to the proceedings and who had no opportunity to place their case before the court,” the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan wrote, while allowing two writ appeals filed against the order.

The judges agreed with Senior Counsel A.K. Sriram representing Tiruchendur Subramaniaswamy Temple management and Special Government Pleader R. Bharanidharan representing the State government, which had preferred the appeals, that the single judge’s order of February 27, 2023, could not be sustained since it had been passed without hearing the State or the temples concerned.

It was brought to the notice of the Division Bench that the single judge had disposed of a writ petition in 2020 by permitting a private individual, S.G.M. Shaa alias Sheik Mohamed of Theni, to keep female elephant Lalitha in his custody although the Forest Department had refused permission. However, when she suffered a fall in 2023, the judge visited her and took up the writ petition once again the next day.

Sustaining the orders passed by the single judge for the proper upkeep of Lalitha, the Division Bench interfered only with respect to the other general directions issued by him regarding all temple elephants and other such pachyderms in private captivity. The Bench said that the single judge ought not to have issued such general directions when the law permits elephants to be kept in captivity.

The Tamil Nadu Captive Elephants (Management and Maintenance) Rules, 2011, framed under Section 64(2)(f) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, already provide a complete code for the possession, housing, care, feeding, working, transport, and retirement of captive elephants, including those held by temples. Rule 3 of the 2011 Rules permits temples to receive elephants donated by others.

“A validly made subordinate legislation of this kind has the force of law and continues to bind until it is set aside by a competent forum in appropriate proceedings, or amended by the rule-making authority itself. A court cannot, in the course of deciding an individual case, issue a direction that has the practical effect of overriding such Rule, without the Rules themselves being under challenge,” the Bench observed.