The order comes after residents held street protests to decry the court’s August 11 directive, which instructed authorities to move an estimated hundreds of thousands of stray dogs into shelters, many of which would have to be built within two months to comply.
Activists and staffers at animal welfare organisations said they were worried the scramble without planning or resources would endanger dogs.
Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party leader and leader of the opposition also spoke out against the verdict. “Blanket removals are cruel, shortsighted, and strip us of compassion,” he said in a post on X.
Nanita Sharma, a lawyer who before the ruling had petitioned the Supreme Court to order municipal authorities to address the city’s long-standing stray dog issue, said that she was relieved the relocation order had been overruled and that the new order was “very balanced” but that local officials still had a lot of work to do.
“No one can deny that the overpopulation of dogs in the city is causing problems,” she said. “But the root cause for things getting out of hand is the authorities not following the neutering and vaccinating policies.”
The initial court order cited an increase in canine attacks and rabies cases, especially among children.
Activists and lawyers said that while some residents view the dogs as part of their neighbourhoods, others see them as a danger and restriction on movement around the city, especially for children and the elderly.
According to India’s existing Animal Birth Control law, stray dogs should be sterilised, vaccinated and then returned to neighbourhoods. But the initial court order had said that strategy was not serving the people of Delhi.
One of the cases that prompted the court’s attention, according to the order, was a July Times of India report about Chavi Sharma, 6, who died after a dog attacked her in Delhi’s Pooth Kalan area on her first week of school.
Her family submitted a complaint to police against local officials in charge of the managing stray dogs.
India recorded nearly 430,000 documented dog bites in January and 3.7 million cases over the course of last year, according to government data released in April. Delhi alone, an urban area home to more than 30 million people, accounted for at least 25,000 cases last year.
Neutering and vaccinating dogs is the only proven method to control the spread of rabies and canine population growth, said Sadhwi Sondhi, the founder of Red Paws Rescue in New Delhi.
“There is no denying the fact that rabies and dog bites cases occur, but the onus falls on the government-run municipality,” Sondhi said. “Nothing has been done in the past, nor is it being done now on a scale that is needed to help sterilise or vaccinate or rehabilitate aggressive dogs.”
Authorities did not have the necessary funds or resources for the previously directed mass relocation, she said, but “mass vaccinating the community dogs, zone by zone, would require far less money”.
“Rounding up all dogs was just not a practical solution to this issue that we are facing in Delhi,” said Sondhi. “It was a death sentence for the dogs.”
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