The Supreme Court's recent order on the stray dog menace in Delhi-NCR is expected to be re-examined. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) has constituted a 3-judge
bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and N.V. Anjaria for the same. The hearing will take place tomorrow. Earlier today, CJI BR Gavai had said he would examine the ongoing issue relating to community dogs, after an advocate mentioned the matter, saying different benches of the Supreme Court have issued conflicting directions. The matter relating to stray dogs was mentioned before a bench headed by the CJI for urgent listing, to which the CJI said, "I will look into this." The Bench had mandated relocating strays to shelters and prohibiting their release back into public spaces.
What did the SC order on stray dogs say?
On August 11, a bench of Justices Pardiwala and R Mahadevan took a stern view of the stray dog menace and ordered the Delhi-NCR to start removing stray dogs from all localities within eight weeks and house them in dedicated dog shelters to be set up by civic authorities. It said that all localities should be made free of stray dogs and there should not be any compromise, while making it clear that no captured animal will be released back on the streets.
It also ordered contempt proceedings against any individual or organisation that attempts to obstruct the authorities from carrying out the capture drive.
The order of the top court came on a suo motu proceedings initiated by it over a media report on the growing menace of stray dog attacks leading to rabies.
Terming the news report as "very disturbing and alarming", the bench had said that day the news report revealed that the elderly and children were the most affected by rabies from dog bite incidents.
(This is a developing story)
