She said the move was impractical and counterproductive, warning that relocating dogs to shelters would worsen the problem as canines from neighbouring states, drawn by the abundance of food, would migrate to the capital and swell the stray population.
Photo: IANS
Animal rights activist and BJP leader Maneka Gandhi on Tuesday called the Supreme Court’s order to round up all stray dogs in Delhi-NCR within eight weeks “angry” and “undoable.”
“When the dogs from here are displaced, dogs from nearby states will come to Delhi, as there will be more food here. Within a week, there will be another three lakh dogs in Delhi, and these will not be sterilised,” she said.
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Gandhi also challenged the lack of space and funding gaps to implement the apex court order.
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At present, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi runs 20 Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres in collaboration with NGOs, but there is not a single government-run shelter in the capital. Under the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2023, these centres act as temporary holding facilities, keeping sterilised strays for up to 10 days before releasing them back to their locations. Experts point out that if all 20 centres were converted into shelters, they could accommodate only 3,500–4,000 dogs at a time, far fewer than the estimated stray population of three lakh in the city.
“Where will you put three lakh dogs? You don’t even have one shelter,” Gandhi said. “To make those shelters, you would need at least Rs 15,000 crore. You’d have to find 3,000 sites in places where no one lives. How will you find that many?”
She also raised concerns over the timelines and huge investment required to manage such shelter facilities, demanding nearly 1.5 Lakh sanitation workers. These are huge investments, impossible for the government to support.
Animal welfare groups criticised civic bodies for decades of inefficiency in implementing dog sterilisation programmes. “Had the Delhi government implemented an effective dog sterilisation programme, there would hardly be any dogs on the road today. But it is not too late to start now,” said Khushboo Gupta, Director of Advocacy Projects at PETA India. “Instead of wasting time, effort, and public resources on ineffective and inhumane displacement drives, an effective sterilisation programme remains the solution — and an urgent need.”
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