Police detain activists at India Gate as Maneka Gandhi calls SC’s Delhi-NCR stray dog shelter order “impractical” and warns of ecological harm. Delhi govt to implement plan despite protests.
New Delhi: On August 11, Police detained animal rights activists, rescuers, caregivers, and dog lovers who were protesting at India Gate in New Delhi against the Supreme Court’s recent order to send all stray dogs in Delhi-NCR to shelters within eight weeks.
The protest came soon after animal rights activist and former Union minister Maneka Gandhi strongly criticised the order, calling it “impractical”, “financially unviable” and “potentially harmful” to the ecological balance in the region.
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The Supreme Court, while calling the stray dog menace “extremely grim”, had directed the Delhi government and civic bodies to start catching stray dogs from all localities and keep them in shelters. The court also warned that strict action would be taken against anyone who tries to stop this process.
Ms Gandhi said that the size of the task made the order completely unrealistic.
she told PTI,
“You have three lakh dogs in Delhi. To get them all off the roads, you’ll have to make 3,000 pounds, each with drainage, water, a shed, a kitchen, and a watchman. That will cost about Rs 15,000 crore. Does Delhi have Rs 15,000 crore for this?”
She further added that just feeding the dogs kept in pounds would require massive funds every week.
“Feeding the impounded dogs would require another Rs 5 crore a week,”
she said, warning that this could lead to public anger.
The former Union minister also questioned the legality of the new order.
“Now, after one month, a two-member bench gives another judgment which says ‘sabko pakdo’ (pick up all). Which judgment is valid? Obviously, the first one, because that’s a settled judgment,”
she stated, referring to a “balanced judgment” passed by a different bench just a month earlier.
Warning of possible side effects if stray dogs were removed, Ms Gandhi said,
“Within 48 hours, three lakh dogs will come from Ghaziabad, Faridabad because there’s food here in Delhi. And once you remove the dogs, monkeys will come on the ground…I’ve seen this happen at my own house. In Paris in the 1880s, when they removed dogs and cats, the city was overrun with rats,” calling dogs “rodent control animals”.
She also warned that carrying out the order could lead to fights on the streets.
She asked,
“To get them into pounds, you will have a pitched battle with feeders in every street because they will beat you up and make the dogs run away. Why are we destabilising Delhi?”
Meanwhile, the Delhi government has said it will follow the Supreme Court’s directive. Chief Minister Rekha Gupta stated that the problem of stray dogs has grown to a huge scale and promised that the government will act in a planned way.
She said,
“The stray dog menace has assumed gigantic proportion and the government will soon come up with a policy and implement the order in a planned manner,”
Delhi Development Minister Kapil Mishra also supported the move, saying,
“Free the city from the fear of rabies and stray animals.”
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