Srinagar: Acknowledging the bane of stray dogs being a serious issue in the twin union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, the High Court has called for immediate and serious attention of the authorities on the matter.
Hearing public interest litigations on the increasing threat by hosts of stray dogs in the two union territories, Chief Justice Tashi Rabstan and Justice M A Chowdhary said that the menace posed by stray dogs, not only in Srinagar but across both Union Territories, warrants immediate and serious attention. “The issues raised in these PILs require urgent deliberation and appropriate remedial measures to mitigate the threat to public safety.”
During the hearing of the PILs, Shashi Kant Bhagat, Law Secretary, Union Territory of Ladakh, was also present in the court.
The court cited a copy of a newspaper report placed before it, highlighting the concern caused by the increasing stray dog numbers in Srinagar city. The newspaper reported ‘roaming of stray dogs inside the Government College for Women, M.A. Road, Srinagar, causing fear and distress among students’.
The High Court has many times called for coordinated action from various agencies to deal with the issue of stray dogs in Jammu and Kashmir. But on the ground the ‘holy voices’ seem to have drowned in the drains of the Municipal Corporations and other civic bodies. Adding to miseries is the fact that there is nobody to point to the nightmares caused by the stray dogs in the rural areas where 80 percent of the population of this poor union territory lives.
The court had even directed the authorities to report as to how effectively various decisions taken by the State Level Implementation and Monitoring Committee related to the dog menace were to be implemented in letter and spirit.
While the committee did note that Animal Birth Control Monitoring Committees (ABC) be constituted at local authority levels following Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023, Schedule II Rule 3, it underlined that the Commissioners of Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) and Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) as also the Directors of Urban Local Bodies Jammu and Kashmir shall frame ABC Camps calendar and circulate it among the district administrations for necessary support and action.
It had asked the Director ULBK and ULBJ to identify land or abandoned buildings in each district for the operationalisation of the ABC programme.
“They should run mobile hospitals in collaboration with district administrations and the Animal Husbandry Department for immediate stop-gap arrangement. They should also send a proposal for procuring subsidised mobile hospitals under the Government of India scheme immediately,” the committee said.
It had also urged JMC, SMC, and other civic bodies to submit a monthly progress report to the State ABC Committee.
“The issue relating to stray dogs is certainly a complicated one, which would require very coordinated action from various agencies and authorities including NGOs working in the field and cannot be dealt with simply,” the court noted.
