The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday questioned the preparedness of the Chandigarh administration to tackle the stray dog menace in the city and gave it time till July to submit measures taken to deal with the problem.
During the resumed hearing of a contempt petition, the HC bench of justice Jaswant Singh asked (orally) that at a time when the administration was making claims on dog sterilisation, spreading awareness and implementing a scheme to deal with the problem, reports of dog bites were still appearing in newspapers. “I am not interested in data. You show me what you have done to curb the menace,” the bench said as UT claimed to have sterilised 9,000 dogs to control their population.
Senior standing counsel for UT Suvil Sehgal and municipal corporation officials argued that a spurt in the incidents of dog bites was a result of a sudden rise in temperature and canines being more prone to getting irritated at the slightest of provocation with March-April being mating season for them. Dissatisfied, the court asked when they knew such a problem could be faced in March-April, why preventive steps were not taken.
The bench was hearing a contempt petition filed by a city resident, Rav Partap Singh, who had alleged wilful disobedience of court orders by UT home secretary Anurag Aggarwal, municipal commissioner B Purushartha and director, department of health Rakesh Kumar Kashyap, for allegedly failing to implement the scheme to deal with the menace.
{{/usCountry}}The bench was hearing a contempt petition filed by a city resident, Rav Partap Singh, who had alleged wilful disobedience of court orders by UT home secretary Anurag Aggarwal, municipal commissioner B Purushartha and director, department of health Rakesh Kumar Kashyap, for allegedly failing to implement the scheme to deal with the menace.
{{/usCountry}}In April 2015, a HC bench had disposed of a petition on the issue directing the administration and the MC to implement the scheme in its letter and spirit. “Any laxity in this regard will be seriously viewed by this court,” the HC had said in its April 2015 order. The scheme, providing for monitoring, guidelines for capturing dogs, rules for sterilisation.