1st September, 2010
To
Shri S.K. Singh
Municipal Commissioner,
Lucknow Municipal Corporation
Lucknow Nagar Nigam
LalBagh, Lucknow
And
Shri Anil Sagar
District Magistrate,
Lucknow, U.P.
Email: dmluc@nic.inThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
SUB: STRAY DOG POPULATION MANAGEMENT – LUCKNOW MUNICIPAL CORPORATION RESORTS TO GROSSLY UNLAWFUL AND UTTERLY CRUEL, BARBARIC ‘METHODS’
Dear Shri S.K. Singh ji, and Shri Anil Sagar ji,
I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairperson of the Animal Welfare Board of India, which is a statutory body established under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, for the promotion of animal welfare generally, and for the purpose of protecting animals from being subjected to unnecessary pain or suffering.
The Board has received complaints from several shocked citizens of Lucknow that following a severe dog-bite case in a school adjacent to ILLEGAL MEAT SHOPS EXISTING IN BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS (SLAUGHTER HOUSE) RULES, 2001, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation, under the guise of ‘controlling the stray dog menace’ wreaking cruel, vicious, and utterly pointless and counter-productive vengeance on any and every stray dog that they manage to corner and capture. Apparently, the method being employed is ‘novel’ but most cruel – iron rods are being used to break the limbs of the animals, and then the disabled and suffering animals are being caught and killed outright, or in any event, dumped outside city limits ! Rather than buttress and support effective implementation of the animal birth control programme at Lucknow, for effective stray dog population management, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation is in fact undermining the efforts being made in that direction by persisting with the completely outdated, barred practice of dumping, and even destroying dogs (in the most barbaric and cruel fashion). Not only are the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001, being flagrantly violated, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act is also being violated in the sheer cruelty that is being perpetrated. In fact, the actions of your employees and staff involved in the dog catching and dumping, or killing, constitute an offence under the Indian Penal Code as well.
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We do not doubt the authenticity of the complaints / information that we are receiving, because they are corroborated by photographs and footage captured on video as well, in some cases. Moreover, even the press is covering the same, and the information is therefore in the public domain.
We are advised that all dogs, including sterilized dogs, are being caught by municipal employees in the manner described above. The same is so hideous a process that even people who don’t like dogs have objected to the same in horror.
It may of course have escaped your attention, but the fate of the disabled, injured animals that are dumped, is the most agonizing death possible – without food, without water, and without other means of survival.
Please bear in mind that what is occurring is bound to ensure that the stray dogs will turn eventually hostile to humans, and will start biting without provocation. It is a known facet of dog behavior that dogs do not usually bite without provocation – but an animal that has suffered in the above stated manner can turn vicious. Moreover, displacing and dislocating dogs never solves the over-population problem because other dogs enter into the vacuum thus created. If sterilized, vaccinated dogs are removed, possibly unsterilized, unvaccinated dogs can enter the territories thus vacated, and breed and proliferate. Therefore the municipal corporation, through its ill-advised, singularly unintelligent methods, is actually adding to the problem.
You may please appreciate that if killing/removal could control dog population, so many stray canines would not still be around. Municipalities have traditionally resorted to killing/removing and dumping dogs as a method to control stray dog population (before the same was outlawed) but the same has not worked anywhere in the world.
Recognizing this fact the WHO (World Health Organization) and the WSPA (World Society for Protection of Animals), after considerable research, collaborated in the publication of the ‘Guidelines for Dog Population Management’ in the year 1990. These Guidelines advocated a systematic sterilization programme in place of mass killing, for reducing dog population. The law in India , i.e. the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, 2001 enacted under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 reflect this progression in thought. A true copy of the same is enclosed herewith as ENCLOSURE A.
The Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001, enacted under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, do not allow killing of stray dogs. Sterilization and immunization are the only methods that can be resorted to in order to control stray dog population, and control the spread of rabies. Dislocation of dogs is not permitted either, and after sterilization and vaccination the dogs have to be returned back to the location that they were picked up from to facilitate systematic area-wise animal birth control.
Rule 6 of the said Rules sets out the ‘Obligations of the local authority’, and envisages, vide its Sub-Rule 2, as follows :
“If the Municipal Corporation or the local authority thinks it expedient to control street dog population, it shall be incumbent upon them to sterilize and immunize street dogs with the participation of animal welfare organizations, private individuals and the local authority.”
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Please note the use of the word ‘incumbent’ in Rule 6 of the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001. Kindly note, it is not open to the municipal corporation or the local authority to resort to any other method/s to control stray dog population.
I may also invite your attention to Rule 13 of the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, which deals with ‘Application of rules where local bye-laws etc., exist’. The same reads as follows :
“If there is in force in any area to which these rules extend, any Act, rule, regulation or bye-law made under any law for the time being in force by the State or the Local Authority in respect of any of the matters for which provision is made in these rules, such rule, regulation or bye-law shall to the extent to which—
(a) it contains provisions less irksome to the animal than those contained in these rules, shall prevail;
(b) it contains provisions more irksome to the animal than those contained in these rules, be of no effect.”
Moreover, your attention is invited again to the fact that the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has, vide order passed on the 23rd January, 2009, in a Special Leave Petition titled “Animal Welfare Board of India versus People for Elimination of Stray Troubles and Others”, numbered as S.L.P. (Civil) No. 691 of 2009, stayed the operation of a Bombay High Court order, which had permitted the killing of “nuisance” dogs by the Municipal Commissioner under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act.
True copies of the order passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, and of a news article in the said regard circulated in the Hindustan Times edition of 24th January, 2009, are enclosed herewith as ENCLOSURES B and C.
It is also reiterated that the WHO’s latest report on rabies, i.e. the ‘WHO EXPERT CONSULTATION ON RABIES’, published in the year 2005 under the WHO Technical Report Series, specifically notes that,
à dogs breed so prolifically that even the highest recorded removal rate – removing 15% – does not significantly impact their population, or reduce the spread of rabies ; and
à sterilization programmes systematically followed in several countries have shown encouraging results, with dog populations, and the number of human rabies cases, reducing.
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That is to say, dislocating dogs, and dumping them at the outskirts of the city, only makes it easier for the ones that remain to survive. On account of the food sources thereby made available to a smaller number, the dogs that remain proliferate more successfully, with larger litter sizes. The vacuum or ‘dog free’ territories created by dislocation are rapidly filled up by new dogs. Dislocation doesn’t therefore solve the problem even to a small extent.
The Lucknow Municipal Corporation therefore would be well advised to adhere to the law of the land in this regard. Please instruct your employees to refrain from resorting to unchecked barbarism, and undermining and rendering infructuous, any animal birth control effort being made by the N.G.O./s working at Lucknow . Please also make it a point to provide the infrastructural and other support required by the N.G.O./s in order to make the programme a success.
I trust the law of the land will be upheld.
Yours sincerely
(Dr. R.M. Kharb)
Maj. Gen. (Retd.), AVSM
Chairman, AWBI
Copies to :
1. Ms. Mayawati ji Hon’ble the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, ( cmup@nic.inThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
2. Shri Atul Kumar Gupta, IAS, The Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, ( csup@nic.inThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
3. Shri Shashank Shekhar Singh, Cabinet Secretary, Government of U.P.
4. Shri Shailja Kant Misra, IPS, Member AWBI – with a request to liaise with the concerned authorities to stop the cruel and barbaric method being adopted by Municipal Corporation of Lucknow to address the population of stray dogs.
5. PS to Hon’ble MOS, MoEF, Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, New Delhi .
6. Shri Hem Pande, IAS, JS (AW) and Member AWBI, Ministry of Environment &
Forests, CGO Complex, Paryavaran Bhawan, New Delhi .
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That is to say, the issue regarding stray dogs, and whether they can be destroyed, is sub-judice before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. The Supreme Court has unequivocally stayed the order passed by one High Court, permitting the killing of dogs under the municipal law of the concerned metropolis. An order passed by the Supreme Court, i.e. the Apex Court , is applicable all over India .
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Hiranmay Karlekar