The Supreme Court on Monday directed the chief secretaries of all states and Union Territories, except Bengal and Telangana, to appear before it over non-compliance of its August 22 order in the stray dog case.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N.V. Anjaria expressed concern over the country’s image that was taking a beating on the issue.
“Continuous incidents are happening and the image of the country is being shown down in the eyes of foreign nations. We are also reading news reports,” the bench orally observed while adjourning the matter to November 3 to enable the chief secretaries to explain why compliance affidavits were not filed.
The bench noted that barring Bengal, Telangana and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, none of the other states and UTs had filed their compliance affidavits.
“Notices have been issued to all the states and Union Territories. As they have not responded, let the chief secretaries… remain present before this court next Monday at 10.30am along with their respective explanations as to why the compliance affidavits were not filed,” it added.
When one of the advocates referred to confusion over some guidelines, the bench said: “Let the authorities come and point that out.”
“Your officers don’t read newspapers? They don’t read social media? They want a formal notice to be issued to them? The order (of August 22) mentioned everything.... Don’t come up with all these excuses,” the bench said.
When a counsel appearing for some animal activists complained of cruelty against stray dogs in several places, the bench said: “What about the cruelty towards
humans?”
It asked all parties to the dispute to come up with meaningful suggestions to deal with the issue.
On August 22, the three-judge bench had modified the directive to round up stray dogs in the Delhi-NCR region and shift them to shelters, stating that the impounded dogs could be released after sterilisation and deworming, except those infected with rabies or displaying aggression.
The court had expanded the scope of the case beyond the confines of Delhi-NCR and directed that all states and UTs be made parties in the matter. The bench also transferred to itself all pending matters on stray dogs before various high courts.
It directed the municipal authorities to file an affidavit of compliance with complete statistics of resources such as dog pounds, veterinarians, dog-catching personnel and specially modified vehicles and cages in accordance with the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules.
The bench had said that municipal authorities would continue to comply with its August 11 directions to pick up stray dogs from Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon.
It ordered the authorities to create dedicated feeding spaces for stray dogs in each municipal ward. The feeding areas shall be created/ identified keeping in view the population and concentration of dogs in that particular municipal ward, the
court added.
The bench had warned animal activists of legal consequences if they obstructed authorities from doing their job.