‘Inhumane, unscientific’: Animal advocates slam Supreme Court directive to relocate stray dogs in Delhi-NCR

She called the mass sheltering of healthy, vaccinated dogs “impractical and inhumane”.

“The proper and responsible response to such tragedies is… declaring a massive sterilisation and vaccination campaign. India has philanthropists who would be glad to invest in this, should money be the issue,” she added.

According to Bharati, the solution lies in scaling up Delhi’s sterilisation and vaccination programmes and running public awareness campaigns on co-existence.

According to India’s Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023, sterilised and vaccinated community dogs are to be returned to their original territories after treatment.

Earlier today, a bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan asked the authorities to build shelters and report about the creation of infrastructure to the court within eight weeks. The bench also stated that the shelters must have sufficient personnel for sterilisation and immunisation of the stray dogs. It also directed monitoring of the shelters by CCTV cameras to ensure that no dogs are taken out.

“There should not be any compromise in undertaking any exercise. If any individual or organisation comes in the way of picking stray dogs or rounding them up, we will proceed to take action against any such resistance,” it said.

Reacting to this development, Dr Mini Aravindan, Senior Director of Veterinary Affairs, PETA India, said: “Had the Delhi government implemented an effective dog sterilisation programme, there would hardly be any dogs on the road today. But it would not be too late to start implementing an effective sterilisation programme now.”

She also said that the displacement of dogs on such a large scale is not scientific and has never shown results.

“As per a population survey conducted in 2022-23, Delhi has around 10 lakh community dogs, with less than half sterilised. Forced removal of some 10 lakh community dogs from Delhi’s streets will cause uproar in communities that care deeply for them and chaos and suffering for the dogs on a large scale. It will also ultimately do nothing to curb the dog population, reduce rabies or prevent dog bite incidents,” she said, stating that it was infeasible to build enough dog shelters to house all stray dogs.

“Displacing dogs also causes fights over territory and problems like starvation,” she said, adding that the government has required that community dogs be sterilised since 2001, a procedure which calms them. These dogs are also vaccinated against rabies in the process.

Alokparna Sengupta, Managing Director, Humane World for Animals – India, a non profit organisation which works at tackling the root causes of animal cruelty in India, said, “It (the order) shows a lack of understanding of science — how sterilisation and rabies works. The problem is that the government of Delhi or the municipalities have not implemented ABC Rules at all over many years…”

According to her, this exercise would make dogs more fearful and anxious around humans.

“Even if you pick up 90% or 95% of the dogs, those 5% (left behind) are going to be the ones that fear you and… retaliate by biting or becoming aggressive. The friendly dogs are the ones who always get caught the first. So, you’re removing the friendly dogs and you’re keeping the scared, anxious, potentially dangerous dogs behind,” she added, questioning the amount of public money that would be required to keep these shelters going.

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