2 yrs on,AMC dog shelter still in plan mode

“It seems nothing has been done ever since and the proposal has been consigned to cold storage,but I personally feel it is still worth executing,” Patel said.

Asked if cost was a factor,she said it won’t entail much expenditure in creating two enclosures to keep the male and female dogs separate.

Patel said animal rights activists were leading the front now,and a new approach was being adopted under which strays will be vaccinated and sterilised. She said putting dogs in shelters were a better option,as after their release,they will still bite people.

On his part,Health Committee Chairman Bhushan Bhatt said: “The proposal remains pending since then,and it could not be implemented as the cost estimates overshot the actual allocation.”

At present,different opinions prevail about the proposal and therefore,it is not worth pursuing unless it is taken up in the next financial year,Bhatt added.

Deputy Municipal Commissioner Capt. Dilipkumar Mahajan,who has been following the dog menace for over a decade now,said the proposal had come from the political wing,a fact which Madhben Patel has also pointed at.

“It was not pursued because it was not found workable. The concept was borrowed from the khoda dhor panjra pol (sick or unproductive animal shelters) but obviously dogs were neither sick nor unproductive,so there was no point in keeping them in such enclosures,especially when they were not meant to be put in captivity and were to be released sooner or later,” he said.