New Delhi: While hearing a case involving stray dog bites Friday, the Delhi High Court observed that the “stray dog menace” was a serious issue that needs urgent resolution by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). But according to animal rights’ activists, there are several issues with the MCD’s animal control programme — including a shortage of funds, lack of a system for routine issues involving strays and low priority given to animal care.
While hearing a woman’s petition to quash two FIRs lodged against her in a case involving feeding stray dogs, the court said the problem of strays “needs to be addressed with urgency by the concerned authority”.
The court’s observations come at a time when the civic body’s handling of strays ahead of the G20 summit has sparked a row, with animal rights activists accusing the civic body of using incorrect, even cruel methods of capture and release of the animals.
The civic authorities have denied the allegations, calling them “exaggerated”. But the row has brought to light other significant issues that activists say plague the civic body’s veterinary department — specifically its animal birth control centres.
According to the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023 — a law that aims at reducing stray dog population by addressing animal welfare issues — an animal birth control centre is a veterinary facility that has surgical infrastructure, post-operative care kennels, quarantine kennels, isolation kennels, and dog transport vehicles with necessary logistics for the purpose of carrying out the animal birth control.
The civic body has 14 ABC centres. In March this year, the Aam Aadmi Party-controlled MCD passed a total budget outlay of Rs 16,023 crore for 2023-24. Of this, under 1 per cent was allocated to the veterinary department.
According to Ayesha Christina Benn, an animal activist who runs a canine birth control and vaccination cell called Neighbourhood Woof, the number of ABC centres should be sufficient to meet the city’s needs. But many of these lack funding and are unable to maintain basic hygiene standards, she said.
The MCD also has an insufficient number of vehicles to transport the captured dogs and its existing fleet is in poor shape.
“There are a high number of stray dog-related complaints on a daily basis in the city, and these vehicles are not enough in number to attend to all needs. Further, the MCD lacks a self-drafted routine to address day-to-day stray dogs issues. Instead, they act only based on complaints,” Christina said, adding that the civic body needs to adopt a data-driven approach.
On its part, the MCD has denied the allegations of incorrect capture and release, claiming that due process was followed.
Amit Kumar, MCD’s director for press and information, told ThePrint that the civic body picks up strays only under two circumstances — either for “special events” like the G20 summit or if an animal displays unsound behaviour.
However, he did admit to one of Christina’s allegations — that MCD doesn’t have a plan to address routine issues involving strays and merely acts on complaints. He added that the body will conduct a stray dog census in Delhi in November.
The last such census was conducted in 2009.
‘Necessary evil’
On Wednesday, while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) flagging concerns about the MCD’s “mishandling” of strays before G20, the Delhi High Court ordered local authorities to comply with the ABC Rules, 2023. The petition said inhumane methods had been used for “removing street dogs” in “blatant violation” of the rules.
Before the event, Gaurav Dar, a consultant at People for Animals (PFA) — an animal welfare organisation — told ThePrint that the civic authorities had “ruthlessly” picked up the animals “with nooses around their necks, and shoved (them) into carrier vehicles.”
But a senior official in the MCD’s veterinary department described the capture and release of the strays as a “necessary evil” to prevent any incident before the summit.
“It is a matter of common sense that when a guest arrives at your place, you would want your surroundings to be clean. Since dignitaries were coming in from other countries, we had to keep the dogs off the streets,” the official told ThePrint.
However, according to Ambika Shukla, a trustee at PFA, the MCD’s approach towards animal care has been “of extremely low priority” despite having a dedicated department.
Shukla told ThePrint that the 2023 Rules prohibit the use of metal nooses and other methods of capture that could be irksome to animals. But the civic body continues to use these instead of nets — which the rules call a “humane” method — “since they have none”, she said.
According to Rule 11 (5), “capturing of the animals shall be done by using humane methods such as net catching or hand catching or any other manner that is less irksome to the animal and use of tongs or wires for catching dogs shall be strictly prohibited”.
Although there were some videos of dogs being captured using nets, Shukla said these were mostly done by NGOs and not the civic body.
In addition, some ABC centres — such as the ones at Masoodpur, Usmanpur, Dwarka and Bela Road — are run by private veterinary doctors, who do little to ensure the upkeep of the premises, she said.
‘NDMC doing better’
One senior MCD official had previously told ThePrint that the animal birth control programme had failed in totality. The official also called the civic body’s actions ahead of G20 a “knee-jerk response”.
“The dogs are being picked up in big numbers because the sterilisation plans over the past three years have not worked out. It is a long-term process and immediate results are not going to reflect. Of course, since there was no other option right now, they have resorted to picking up the dogs and hiding them from public view,” said the official.
But Shukla disagrees that the sterilisation plans have failed altogether, although she concedes that most of the effort was by feeders and animal activists, not the civic body. In contrast, she says the New Delhi Municipal Council — the body that administers the area commonly known as Lutyens’ Delhi — is putting in more effort in the programme.
“There is a reason why the areas under the New Delhi Municipal Council do not face a problem, and they are doing a fine job with only two ABC centres. The MCD has many more, but they are not interested in working effectively,” she said.
According to the rules, no animal birth control programme can be carried out without the constitution of the local animal birth control monitoring committee.
The body, which comprises municipal commissioner, committee chairperson and representatives from the public health and other departments, and a representative of the district Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is mandated to meet once a month.
Rule 13 (i) mandates that the authority in charge of the programme must submit a monthly report detailing the number of street dogs caught and sterilised, and housed for observation and the number that died before, during or after surgery, among other details.
When asked if the MCD has submitted its monthly report to the committee, the senior MCD official confirmed that it had but refused to share details.
He also denied Shukla’s allegation that the MCD doesn’t use nets to capture dogs.
“We have many nets, but I cannot remember how many. The sterilised dogs are marked with ear notching (the process of cutting a chunk out of the ear and then sealing the wound with heat cautery) but I cannot disclose any figures. There is no need for me to elaborate on this,” the official said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)