For Delhi’s stray dogs, the Supreme Court’s recent order to remove them from the streets is not just a change of address, it’s a sentence to unimaginable suffering. A dog will be forcibly caught, dragged away from familiar faces and smells, and thrust into an overcrowded, noisy shelter he never imagined. In those cramped, alien cages, fear will gnaw at his mind while poor conditions slowly break his body. What begins as an act of “removal” will, in reality, be both mental and physical torture for an animal that has done nothing but exist in the only home he has ever known.
The way we treat our animals reflects the way we treat each other.
Delhi is facing a mission impossible after the Supreme Court’s recent order to round up all stray dogs in Delhi-NCR within eight weeks and keep them in shelters. While we respect the authority of the court, this decision may be the most impractical and perhaps the least compassionate ruling in recent history.
The truth is, Delhi lacks the facilities, staff, and funds to carry out this order humanely. Experts warn it will cause unimaginable suffering to animals and could even worsen human–dog conflict.
Currently, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) operates 20 Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres in collaboration with NGOs. These are not long-term shelters; they are temporary spaces where dogs stay for about 10 days after sterilisation before being returned to their neighbourhoods, as required by the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2023.
Even if all existing kennels were converted into permanent shelters, they could hold only around 4,000 dogs at a time. Delhi’s street dog population is estimated to be close to one million. That means more than 96% of the animals would have nowhere to go.
Caging thousands of dogs is not compassion; it is a silent catastrophe.
And that is only the space problem. The cost problem is even bigger. Feeding a million dogs at ₹40 per day would cost around ₹3 crore every day, over ₹1,000 crore a year. That does not include salaries, medical care, transport, and construction of new facilities. Former Union Minister and animal rights champion Maneka Gandhi says the cost could reach ₹15,000 crore, a sum Delhi simply does not have.
There is also no accurate count of Delhi’s stray dogs. The last city-wide census was in 2009. Without knowing the real numbers, planning is impossible.
Catching and transporting a million dogs will require hundreds of trained animal handlers, vehicles, and quarantine facilities. Currently, each of the city’s 12 zones has only two dog-catching vans. Even the plan to start with “ferocious” dogs, about 12,000 animals, is seen as unworkable.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Animal welfare organisations say the order directly goes against the ABC Rules, which state that community dogs must be sterilised, vaccinated, and released back to their areas. Removing them permanently is not only inhumane but also illegal under these rules.
Experts warn that putting large numbers of dogs into overcrowded shelters will lead to fights, spread of disease, and high death rates. Dogs are territorial, forcing them together from different areas will cause more aggression, not less.
Groups like PETA India, FIAPO, and People for Animals have called the order “shocking”, “illogical”, and “contrary to global public health guidance”. They say removing community dogs will not solve the problem of bites or population growth, but only sustained sterilisation and vaccination can.
This order risks replacing open cruelty on the streets with hidden cruelty behind shelter walls. With all due respect to the Supreme Court, this may well be remembered as a black day for compassion in India, a decision that puts impossible expectations above humane, workable solutions.