The fresh Supreme Court hearing came amid uproar over its previous order directing picking up of dogs and placing them in shelters within eight weeks in Delhi.
As a three-judge Supreme Court bench began hearing arguments against the apex court’s previous order on stray dogs in the Delhi-NCR region, Justice Vikram Nath asked “what is the objectionable part?”, referring to the ruling.
The Supreme Court posed the question to Kapil Sibal, who was representing the petitioners seeking a stay on the order directing picking of all stray dogs in Delhi-NCR within eight weeks and housing them in dog shelters.
When asked to specify what he found objectionable in the order, Sibal presented some arguments, all of which centered around the shortage of dog shelters in the Delhi-NCR region.
“Start rounding the street dogs from all locality in Delhi Ghaziabad Faridabad etc and to relocate them to Shelters and pounds that don’t exist,” Sibal was quored as saying by LiveLaw, adding that he did not have any problem with the directions on creating the shelters.
“Direction that stray dogs should not be released. That also can’t be implemented as there are no Shelters in the first place. Direction that there should be no lethargy in picking up the dogs. That also needs to be stayed. Where will they take the dogs once they pick them up?” Sibal further argued.
Not just Sibal, other advocates representing the petitioners also raised the issue of a lack of enough shelters for the dogs in the city.
After hearing the arguments, Justice Sandeep Mehta asked for an affidavit to be filed.
Meanwhile, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the government, spoke in favour of Supreme Court’s order from earlier this week, highlighting the number of dog bite cases in the country.
Reacting to the outrage over the Supreme Court order by people and animal rights activists, Mehta said, “There is a very loud vocal minority and silent suffering majority”, adding he has seen people posting videos of eating meat and then claiming to be animal lovers.
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