Context

• On August 11, 2025, the Supreme Court of India issued an order directing the rounding up and incarceration of all street dogs in New Delhi into mass shelters.
• While the order was stayed just eleven days later, its initial pronouncement revealed deep flaws in legal reasoning, scientific understanding, and moral responsibility.
• Far from solving the problem of dog bites and public health, the decree threatened to create a humanitarian and ecological disaster while diverting public attention from the city’s more urgent crises.

The Problematic Aspect of SC Order on Stray Dogs

• A Blueprint for Catastrophe
  • The Court’s order was hailed in some quarters as a long-awaited solution to the so-called stray dog menace.
  • Yet, evidence from both India and abroad demonstrates that mass confinement of street dogs is an unscientific and counterproductive approach.
  • Experiences in the United States with the pound system show that such shelters become sites of overcrowding, psychological distress, aggression, and disease outbreaks.
  • Studies, such as those by sociologist Leslie Irvine and researcher David Tuber, confirm that long-term confinement causes severe behavioural deterioration in dogs.
  • In the Indian context, mass shelters would inevitably collapse under the sheer numbers involved.
  • Delhi’s lakhs of territorial dogs, suddenly captured and caged, would fight violently, leading to injuries and deaths.
• Bypassing Established Guidelines
  • The order also ignored the well-documented vacuum effect: the mass removal of dogs from one area merely invites migration from surrounding regions.
  • Nature fills the void, and food sources in Delhi would continue to draw dogs from neighbouring states.
  • Simultaneously, the disappearance of street dogs, who serve as efficient scavengers, would likely trigger surges in rodent and monkey populations, creating new public health crises.
  • In bypassing global and national guidelines, such as the WHO’s recommendations and India’s National Action Plan for Dog Mediated Rabies Elimination (NAPRE), the Court’s directive strayed dangerously from science.

The Social and Ethical Dimensions and The Politics of Distraction

• The Social and Ethical Dimensions
  • The narrative that the dog issue pits an elite against the poor is both simplistic and cruel.
  • As scholar Yamini Narayanan’s work highlights, street dogs occupy a symbiotic space within urban ecosystems.
  • For Delhi’s homeless, citizens failed repeatedly by the state, street dogs are not a menace but companions and guardians, providing comfort and protection in the harshness of life on the pavements.
  • To forcibly remove these animals would not only traumatise them but also strip vulnerable humans of their only source of emotional solidarity.
• The Politics of Distraction
  • Perhaps most troublingly, the dog order functioned as a diversion from the governance failures that plague the capital.
  • By foregrounding an emotional and polarising issue, attention was drawn away from collapsing infrastructure, perennial flooding, corruption, inflation, and even allegations of voter manipulation.
  • Instead of holding the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) accountable for its inability to manage sanitation, public health, and statutory duties, the Court’s order offered a convenient scapegoat: the city’s dogs.

The Way Forward

• Animal Birth Control
  • The answer to Delhi’s dog population challenge has long been known: the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme.
  • Proven successful in cities like Jaipur and Jodhpur, ABC relies on sterilisation and vaccination to reduce dog populations gradually while ensuring high levels of rabies immunity.
  • A 2010 study from Jodhpur demonstrated measurable and sustainable declines in dog populations following such interventions.
  • The problem, therefore, lies not with the animals but with the MCD’s dereliction of duty.
  • Chronic underfunding, unmet sterilisation targets, and lack of accountability have crippled the programme’s implementation.
  • In fact, the Supreme Court’s own 2024 Maheshwari judgment upheld the ABC Rules, 2023, reaffirming their scientific and compassionate foundations.
• Towards an Evidence-Based Future
  • There is no denying that dog bites must be addressed. But the answer is not mass incarceration, a final solution approach that is both inhumane and ineffective.
  • Instead, targeted and evidence-based strategies are needed.
  • Aggressive dogs must be identified, captured, and monitored, but indiscriminate round-ups serve no purpose.
  • Vaccination, sterilisation, and public education remain the only sustainable, humane, and scientifically grounded methods of control.

Conclusion

• The Supreme Court’s August 11 order was a victory of hysteria over science, expedience over compassion, and distraction over accountability.
• By staying the order, the Court has already corrected course, but the episode should serve as a warning.
• India’s cities cannot afford policy dictated by panic or populist narratives. Instead, they must embrace proven, humane, and scientific strategies, while holding governance institutions accountable for their failures.