MCD to remove street dogs in Delhi from G20 sites

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi will carry out a month-long drive to remove street dogs from at least 50 locations.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi, in an order issued on Thursday, said it will carry out a month-long drive to remove street dogs from at least 50 locations across the Capital ahead of the G20 summit in September, for nearly six weeks. The drive will be undertaken to ensure that the delegates and tourists visiting the Capital do not face any “inconvenience”, an MCD official said, requesting anonymity.

Some people also flagged that it was against the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023 to keep a street dog at an ABC for over seven days. (HT Archive)

The order has raised concerns about the care and safety of the dogs among animal rights activists, who said that such relocations may cause disease transmission apart from concerns about Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres’ capacity to host the dogs for such a long period. Some people also flagged that it was against the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023 to keep a street dog at an ABC for over seven days.

The civic body’s veterinary department on Thursday ordered its zonal offices and the NGOs working with it to ascertain the number of dogs in and around G20 locations and shift them to ABC centres for up to six weeks. The G20 locations are spread over seven MCD zones. The above quoted official added that all street dogs picked up during this time will be shifted to ABC centres and released back to the same locations after the summit.

The corporation will start the drive on Friday and continue till August 30, during which civic staff, NGOs and private veterinary doctors will be deployed. No leaves will be sanctioned for MCD workers during this period, the order said.

The drive will focus on locations identified with the help of city administrations along with potential sites tourists may visit including near hotels, convention centres, markets, shrines and places of cultural and historical interest. Delhi will host six major G20 events between 3-10 September.

Some of the areas identified for the drive include tourist locations like Red Fort, Chandni Chowk, Town Hall, Jama Masjid, Ghalib Ki Haveli and Hauz Khas.

MCD has 18 ABC centers operated with the help of NGOs and private veterinary doctors where 80,000-90,000 dog sterilisations are carried out annually.

According to the guidelines laid down by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) and ABC dog rules 2023, after sterilising street dogs, the civic agency should release them in the same area from where they were picked up.

MCD routinely relocates street dogs around key areas like Rajghat during the VIP movements but the relocation period usually lasts for 1-2 days.

Similar long-term street dog removal drives were held in Delhi in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the corporation admitted that it released the dogs in Noida, sparking outrage among animal rights activists.

Gauri Maulekhi, a trustee at “People for Animals”, an NGO, and an animal welfare expert said that such capture and release of dogs is routinely done on Republic Day but it is not a good practice as it may transmit diseases and add to conflict. “If only MCD and the Delhi government make their respective monitoring committees and enforce the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023, a permanent solution may be arrived at,” she said.

Ambika Shukla, another animal rights activist, who runs the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre (SGACC), said the MCD’s plan seems like a recipe for disaster.

“Lifting dogs at such a large-scale is unheard of. Our ABC centres are already operating at their maximum capacity and some of these centres only have a holding capacity of around 40 dogs,” she said, stating keeping them there for over a month was also against the rules.

“Not only will they fall sick, but the rules state a dog can only be kept for a maximum period of seven days, unless there is a wound. Delhi has hosted several such world events in the past, but there has not been a need to remove dogs at such a scale,” she said.

Former veterinary director of the South MCD and an expert working with AWBI, Dr Ravindra Sharma, said that similar drives were carried out in 2010, ahead of the Commonwealth Games but the corporation teams faced multiple challenges from which lessons must be learnt.

“We temporarily relocated dogs around the main venue but there would be some gaps near walls and more dogs would enter places like CWG village. The corporation needs to ensure proper disposal of food waste as it will attract more dogs,” he said.

Delhi does not know the exact number of street dogs it houses. The last pan-Delhi survey was conducted by the erstwhile united MCD in 2009 in which the number of street dogs in the Capital was 560,000. A sub-committee constituted by the Delhi Assembly in 2019 on the issue of street dogs had estimated that the population of street dogs was around 800,000.

An MCD official said that enough provision for care and feeding will be made at ABC centres during the period and the dogs will be relocated to the same area. “All details are updated online with photographs. Veterinary department officials can monitor the activity through the app. We will ensure all dogs are released in the same area,” the official said.