A three-judge bench of the apex court reserved its order on a plea challenging its August 11 directive to remove all stray dogs from Delhi-NCR, while calling out authorities for their “inaction” in implementing existing rules.
August 14, 2025: On Thursday, the Supreme Court put off its decision on requests to postpone its August 11 order to remove all stray dogs from the Delhi-NCR region. Justice Vikram Nath led a three-judge bench that said it would issue an interim order on the issue, which has caused a lot of public debate.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who represented the Delhi government, said that the issue is between a “loud vocal minority” and a “silent suffering majority.” He showed data from 2024 that said there were 37 lakh dog bites and 305 deaths from rabies in the country. Most of the deaths were in people aged 15 and up. Mehta made it clear that sterilization did not stop dog bites or “mutilation of children.”
In response, prominent lawyers Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi questioned how useful the August 11 order was. Sibal said that the city doesn’t have enough shelters and that the decision goes against the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, which say that sterilized dogs must be returned to their original families. Singhvi said that dog bites are a problem, but that there have been “zero rabies deaths in Delhi this year.” He also said that the injunction might make things worse.
During the hearing, the bench reprimanded municipal officials for not following the ABC Rules, saying that this passivity is what led to the problem of stray dogs. A different court gave the ruling on August 11 that all areas be free of stray dogs, and no captured animal should be let back out onto the streets.