​Dogs and laws: on street dogs and the Supreme Court order

The August 11 Supreme Court order represents the most forceful judicial intervention yet on the matter of free-roaming dogs. By directing Delhi and its satellites to collect every street dog within eight weeks, confine them permanently in pounds, and expand shelter capacity at speed, the Court has signalled its willingness to override administrative lethargy. Delhi records roughly 30,000 dog bite cases a year and rabies still kills poor urban residents with patchy access to post-exposure prophylaxis. The Court’s blunt instrument conflicts with the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023, specifically its doctrine of “capture, neuter, vaccinate, release”, and which forbid municipalities from permanently relocating healthy dogs or impounding them for long periods except if a dog is rabid, incurably ill or found to be dangerously aggressive by a veterinarian. The Rules have failed the test of numbers, however. Urban dog populations have continued to swell despite sporadic sterilisation drives because 70% coverage, below which reproduction rebounds, has almost nowhere been reached. The prescription to return dogs to their territories has entrenched packs in the same high-density neighbourhoods where children play and garbage accumulates. The Rules also block municipalities from exploring alternative strategies such as long-term impoundment. Now, if the Rules are intact, municipal officers who confine dogs could be prosecuted; if they obey the Rules, they risk contempt of court.

Policymakers should treat this conflict as an opportunity to confront an outdated legal setup. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 was enacted when India’s urban footprint was modest. Today’s conurbations with dense informal settlements cannot afford such dog populations. Entrenched ideological positions that romanticise “community dogs” and regard confinement as oppression take insufficient account of the dense human ecology. A modern statute should clearly distinguish between sociable dogs that can find homes; aggressive or chronically ill dogs that require euthanasia; and the large residual category that can live in proper shelters — but none on public roads. Cities should impose duties on municipalities, specify minimum staffing and veterinary standards for pounds, and tie fiscal transfers to reductions in morbidity. Urban local bodies also need steady funding, perhaps under the National Centre for Disease Control, to bankroll the construction and operation of shelters and to fund large-scale sterilisation teams. Veterinary education councils should integrate shelter medicine into curricula to ensure a workforce exists to staff new facilities. Without such support, Delhi risks swapping its dog menace with underfunded canine slammers at the city’s edge, invisible but also cruel.