The Kerala High Court on Wednesday again refused to stay the ban imposed by the Centre on selling cattle for slaughter at animal markets, reported ANI. The bench will next hear the case on June 28.

On May 31, the High Court had observed that the recent notification by the Centre did not stop anyone from selling cattle for slaughter outside the cattle market and said there was no order in place that banned the consumption of meat. “You sell it from your house,” Chief Justice Navniti Prasad said in response to a petition against the ban.

The court had asked whether the government notification violated any fundamental rights of the citizen, or contained any clause that affected labour laws in the country.

If people had read the rules framed by the Centre, then there wouldn’t have been any protests, the bench said before dismissing the petition. The court had also expressed surprise at a Madras High Court ruling on May 30 staying the Modi government’s notification for four weeks.

On Wednesday, the court again refused to stay the Centre’s ban after considering a Public Interest Litigation filed by Youth Congress State Secretary TS Saji.

The ruling comes a week after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan came out strongly against the ban, calling it an effort by the Narendra Modi government to “scuttle the secular character of the country”.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will on June 15 hear a plea filed by a Hyderabad-based organisation challenging the notification.

On May 26, the Centre had issued new rules that require cattle traders to give an undertaking that the animals being sold at markets would only be used for agricultural purposes. Several states have massively criticised the notification, including Kerala, West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh, among others. There have also been protests against the ban in some parts of the country, including a beef-eating festival organised in IIT-Madras, which led to an assault on a PhD scholar by alleged members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.