New Delhi: ‘Awara nahi Humara,’ ‘Jail nahi jeevan,’ ‘Have a heart, my Lords’—come 4 January, several cities will reverberate with these slogans as animal welfare activists and dog lovers across India plan a ‘do-or-die’ protest in the run-up to the 7 January Supreme Court hearing.
“Concerned citizens and animal welfarists from all across the country will be coming onto the streets on Sunday because the cost of not doing so is death for our dogs,” said Ambika Shukla, a trustee at People for Animals (PFA). “This is literally a do-or-die situation because the Supreme Court order is effectively a death warrant for our dogs.”
On 7 November, the SC ordered national and state authorities to immediately remove all stray dogs from railway stations, schools, hospitals, bus stops and other public areas, and relocate them “to a designated shelter” after due sterilisation and vaccination in accordance with the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules framed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Weeks later on 18 December, the SC declined to entertain a plea, which sought to flag the “inhuman treatment” that could be meted out to the dogs in the wake of the regulations proposed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).
“This whole time, the courts have simply refused to listen to us,” said Manavi Rai, a petitioner and New Delhi-based animal rights activist. “The protests are against this refusal to listen to us. You cannot claim to have delivered justice without even listening to the other side.”
“Silence is not an option anymore. If you have ever loved a dog, please come out on 4 January,” she said.
Also Read: UGC tells universities to prevent entry of stray dogs in campus, calls for ’round-the-clock vigil’
Questions of legal tenability
The court’s order to transfer all dogs to “mythical” shelter homes that exist only on paper has plunged the administration into utter confusion and bureaucratic pandemonium, said Maneka Gandhi, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and animal rights activist.
“The court asked state authorities to pick up dogs and give compliance reports…Given that this is such an unfeasible order, the state governments would be forced to give false compliance reports to the SC.”
“This puts a permanent question mark on the Supreme Court’s own credibility and the weight of its orders,” she said. “If this precedent is set, then nothing will stop anyone from lying to the SC all the time.”
“By directing them to erect fencing and boundaries to keep out dogs, the SC has actually imposed costs on private educational institutions and hospitals which are not even party to the case. Besides, how do you fence bus stops and railway stations?” Shukla said. “Where will schools and hospitals get the money and resources to erect these walls?”
In addition, hundreds of schools have written to the SC saying that they are happy to look after the dogs living in their premises so clearly such an order is misplaced.
“Especially when India already has the ABC Rules which are endorsed by WHO,” she added. “What the SC has ordered needs hundreds of crores of rupees—you need money for land, food, water, medication, staff salaries, etc. to implement the court’s order,” she said. “Whereas to implement the ABC Rules takes just a one time cost of Rs 1,000 per dog.”
It is unprecedented that the SC should have given three separate, contradictory orders in the same matter within three months and the dogs are paying the price for this back-and-forth, she added.
“Dogs are being picked up and illegally shoved into ABC units because there are absolutely no municipal shelters.
These ABC units have tiny spaces meant for post-surgery dogs so they do not move about much,” she said. “But because there are no shelter homes, authorities are confining healthy dogs into these cramped spaces where they are expected to live for life with no exercise. They will be forced to eat and poop in the same space which no dog does naturally.”
‘Risk of unimaginable ecological imbalance’
It is not just dogs who are at risk with this order, points out Kunal Dev Sharma, the chief veterinary surgeon at MaxPetZ, a leading chain of veterinary hospitals & clinics.
“The court order presents a significant shift from the existing ABC Rules, which have proven to be efficient time and again,” Sharma said. “By making dogs captive in small spaces, you increase chronic stress in dogs, which affects their immunity drastically. It makes them susceptible to a host of infections like parvovirus, canine distemper, respiratory diseases and dreadful skin diseases.”
“When hundreds and thousands of such dogs are kept in captivity in small places, outbreaks are almost inevitable,” he added. “The human staff is bound to get it, and there are several examples globally of how deadly viruses have spread due to such conditions.”
Moreover, the elimination of dog populations can create havoc in local ecologies, Sharma said. “Dogs are pack animals that guard a particular territory. They act as scavengers helping waste-management. They maintain a predator-prey balance in local areas,” he said. “This basically means, if you remove them arbitrarily, either rodents will follow or wild dangerous animals can claim their space, spreading deadlier diseases and man-animal conflict.”
Rai, too, argued that history is replete with such cases.
In 1994, the municipal commissioner of Surat, Gujarat, ordered the killing of all the city’s dogs, she said. While all dogs were killed within two weeks, rats took over the city, and a deadly plague engulfed not just Surat, but spread to other parts of India.
“We have been trying to tell all of this to the SC, but they are not listening to us,” she said. “That is why the 4 January protest is a clarion call.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
The arguments put forth by these activists are so absurd and outright false.
You should be asking what are these so called shelters ? Are they safe ?
I am sorry to say this but as someone who likes dog and animals I think it’s time to remove them from the streets. Every footpath is littered with dog poop and none of these so called activists are removing it, are they ?
Street Dogs also eat trash which is so horrendous for their health. Also why are we not talking about stray cows ? We should also remove them from the streets for the same reason. They literally eat plastic from trash and are dying because of you idiots.
Seriously shut your trashy activism and if you really care about animals, make sure they get proper shelter. Also talk about stray cattle unless you think they don’t deserve our sympathy
Please do not tag exclusivist dog lovers as animal lovers. There is lot of duplicity at play here when it comes to protection of animals for which only dogs qualify for many pseudo activists !