On November 7, the Supreme Court directed all states and Union Territories to clear stray dogs from educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands, depots and railway stations, and shift them to designated shelters after sterilisation and vaccination under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N. V. Anjaria also ruled that dogs picked up from these locations must not be released back to the same spots, a significant departure from existing ABC policy, as per reports

The Bench instructed municipal bodies to carry out the removal and asked every covered institution to appoint a nodal officer to ensure cleanliness and prevent stray dogs from entering the premises

The directive follows the court’s modification of its own August order on stray dogs in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR)

Earlier, a Bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan had taken suo motu cognisance of a report titled “City Hounded by Strays, Kids Pay Price”, prompting authorities in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad to begin picking up strays and moving them to shelters