To curb the stray dog menace, teams of the Municipal Corporation, Bathinda, started a drive to catch stray dogs two days ago.
The terror of dogs in the city is such that as many as 1,040 patients visited the Civil Hospital from May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016, for getting anti-rabies injections. The information was revealed by the Health Department under the RTI Act.
Last year in November, Mayor Balwant Rai Nath was bitten by a stray dog in the Sanjay Nagar area. Thereafter, it was expected that the civic body would initiate a new scheme to tackle the menace. The problem has increased manifold due to the lacklustre approach of the corporation.
Sunil, a resident of Pukhraj colony, said he had filed a number of complaints with officials of the MC regarding the stray dog menace, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, officials of the civic body claim that as many as 20 dogs have been sterilised in the past two days while earlier 50 dogs were sterilised in the city.
A dog shelter scheme of the civic body has been lying in cold storage for the past one year.
BJP leader Sunil Singla and Congress councillor Sherry Goyal said the civic body should take the issue seriously. They said besides stray dogs, stray cattle had also become a cause of worry for residents of the city.
Around 22 people died and more than 100 injured in the past five years due to stray animals.
Hiranmay Karlekar