Municipal Corporation of Delhi to remove stray dogs from G20 meeting sites

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has said through an order that it will carry out a month-long drive to remove strays from almost 50 locations across the national capital to prepare for the G20 meetings. This move is being undertaken by the MCD to make sure that there is no inconvenience for the delegates and tourists visiting the national capital.

This move has raised concerns amongst the animal rights groups about the care and the safety of the dogs during the time they will be kept in Animal Birth Control centres. Some of the activists have also questioned whether these centres have the capacity to actually properly keep the dogs and maintain them.

The MCD currently has 18 ABC centres operated with the help of NGOs and private veterinary doctors where 80,000-90,000 dog sterilisations are carried out annually. They 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 corporation will start the drive on Friday and continue till August 30, during which civic staff, NGOs and private veterinary doctors will be deployed. 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. No leaves will be sanctioned for MCD workers during this period, the order said.

The MCD had undertaken similar stray dog removal drives in anticipation of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. However, this move had sparked an outrage as the MCD had released the captured dogs in Noida instead of the place from where they were captured.

Former veterinary director of the South MCD and an expert working with AWBI, Dr Ravindra Sharma, who worked during the stray removal drive of 2010 ahead of the Commonwealth Games, said that, “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.”

Ambika Shukla, 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.