New Delhi, Jan 28: The Supreme Court on Wednesday flagged concern over state governments not complying with its directions to enhance their stray dog sterilisation capacity, saying, “They are all building castles in the air.” A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N V Anjaria, which commenced hearing states’ submissions on compliance of its earlier directions, expressed its unhappiness over the progress and said they were engaged in “storytelling”.
Senior advocate Gaurav Agarwal, who has been appointed amicus curiae in the matter, summarised the initiatives taken by different states, while flagging the deficiencies.
He pointed out that some states have taken steps in consonance with the top court’s direction, but there was still a long way to go for total compliance.
The governments will have to step up animal birth control (ABC) facilities, ramp up sterilisation of stray dogs, set up dog pounds (animal shelters), fence up institutional areas and remove stray animals from roads and highways, the advocate said. Pointing to the initiatives taken by the Bihar government, Agrawal said there are 34 ABC Centres where, they say, 20,648 dogs have been sterilised. But they have not specified the daily capacity of sterilisation, and for what period the figure specifies, he said.
“The state should have done a complete audit of ABC centres. If there are more than six lakh dogs in the state, sterilisation of 20,648 dogs is totally insufficient. Ninety-one dogs are presently lodged in the pounds.
“The affidavit does not indicate in how many institutional areas the survey has been done to see if there are fences, boundary walls, etc.,” Agarwal submitted.
The bench said, “They are all building castles in the air. None of the states have given data on how many stray dog bites happened, except for Assam.” (PTI)
