Supreme Court’s latest order keeps stray dog issue on a short leash

On the highly divisive stray dog issue, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has been pendulum-like over the last months: first swinging toward a muscular removal approach, then tempering itself to align with the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 (ABC) framework, and now settling into a safety-centric posture that seemingly revives the original position by another route. 

Reading the three key orders together—11 August, 22 August, and 7 November—makes it clear that the Court is trying to reconcile two mandates that do not sit easily together: the ABC regime which requires that dogs are sterilised, vaccinated and returned to their territories, and an immediate duty to prevent injuries and rabies exposure in spaces where people are clustered and vulnerable. 

The August Orders 

On 11 August, acting on a report in The Times of India, a two-judge Bench directed the Delhi-NCR authorities to capture, sterilise, vaccinate and relocate all strays to shelters within eight weeks, expressly barring release back onto the streets. Thereafter, via administrative orders, the matter was placed before a three-judge Bench to consider the wider set of operational and legal issues and ensure consistency across directions.

On 22 August, the three-judge Bench acknowledged that a blanket non-release direction was “too harsh,” and kept the 11 August bar on release “in abeyance,” restoring the statutory position: pick up, sterilise, deworm, vaccinate and release the dogs to the same locality, except if they are rabid. 

In addition, the Court mandated designated feeding spaces and helplines to report violations, signalling an effort to regulate human behaviour around strays as much as canine movement. This was the Court at its most calibrated—explicitly invoking Rule 11(19) of the ABC Rules, 2023, and candid about municipal capacity limits. 

The November Order

The latest order, dated 7 November, changes the frame. It is not a citywide non-release mandate; instead, it carves out “institutional areas”—schools, colleges, hospitals, sports complexes, bus depots and stands including ISBTs, railway stations—as spaces requiring exceptional, preventive measures. Within these premises, the Court directs that every stray dog found must be removed, sterilised and vaccinated per ABC, but then shifted to a designated shelter and not released back to the same location. 

It couples the non-release rule with compliance measures: fencing and securing campuses, nodal officers, periodic inspections, mandatory Anti-Rabies Vaccine and immunoglobulin stocks, SOPs from the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) within four weeks, and statewide affidavits of compliance within eight weeks. It also reaffirms separate directions for highways, extending removal-and-shelter duties to road authorities and the National Highways Authority of India. 

The latest order has drawn criticism for creating a narrow but norm-shifting exception. The 22 August order permitted release to the same locality. The 7 November order, while stating that it works “in furtherance” of the 22 August directions, suspends the return-to-territory rule inside a large class of public places. 

Capacity-building constraints

For animals that live on or near such sites, the directive amounts to permanent removal. The Court’s justification is a risk-based taxonomy of space—children and patients in open campuses being uniquely vulnerable—yet the effect is to make non-release the rule across large institutional spaces. The worry of animal welfare activists is that once a no-return zone is created for campuses and transport hubs, municipalities may widen those labels informally to avoid complaints and litigation, hollowing the default rule by expanding exceptions. 

A second strand of criticism concerns feasibility. Several states and cities immediately flagged capacity deficits: shelters to house “lakhs” of dogs within an eight-week horizon, trained catchers, transport, vets, and biosecurity protocols. Many jurisdictions are already operating with thin veterinary staffing and minimal kennel space. The scale of the logistical scramble is captured in the example of Kerala. The state has 19 ABC centres against a requirement to accommodate around five lakh dogs. It is already seeing protests from animal welfare groups. 

Even if the order is limited to institutional premises, the numbers are sobering once you plot every public school and hospital in a city. The concern is that compliance pressure without capacity-building can produce perverse outcomes such as overcrowded pounds, disease risk or culling in the name of safety. 

Risk of rushed compliance 

There is also the question of whether judicial directions can carve out  exceptions to a central rule that otherwise binds local bodies. The November Order does two things to answer that. First, it insists that ABC 2023 remains the normative frame, and expressly situates its carve-out as a targeted measure to protect Article 21 right in specific high-risk spaces. Second, it tasks the AWBI with issuing SOPs for institutional premises, thereby attempting to fold the exception back into a rule-based, nationwide protocol rather than leaving the improvisation to local authorities. 

The Order emphasises monitoring and accountability through affidavits, designated officers and timelines. This reflects the Court’s view that more robust follow-through can assist compliance in an area that has often been low-priority for authorities. The Bench seems serious about affidavit deadlines, and has also spelled out consequences for non-compliance. Supervision may expedite coordination across agencies, but durable outcomes still depend on systems that function without continuous judicial monitoring. 

Two practical pivots could decide whether the recent Order works as a stabilising adjustment. First, states and local bodies need to treat perimeter control, waste management and animal-handling capacity as a single project. The more effectively campuses are sealed and kept clean, the fewer pickups will be needed to keep them dog-free, and the less pressure falls on shelters. 

Second, the AWBI’s protocols must be concrete. They should spell out when a dog can be permanently relocated away from a campus, where it should go, minimum kennel and staffing ratios, mandatory vaccination records and periodic third-party inspections. Without such operational details, the order’s humane intent can be lost in hurried compliance. 

The matter will be next heard on 13 January 2026.