While the ‘Canine officers’ of President Barack Obama’s security forces are leading luxurious lives in five-star hotels, poor stray dogs are being hounded out of high security lutyens’ Zone by civic agencies to ensure a hassle-free parade during the high-profile Republic Day. The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has rounded up around 125 stray dogs so far.
With just a day more to go, officials of the lone veterinary hospital under the NDMC are quite busy as they have been assigned the task of clearing stray animals off the VVIP stretch from Vijay Chowk to India Gate, where the historic Republic Day parade will be showcased. The process began weeks ago.
The process is simple and the civic agency claims the dogs are well taken care of. It picks up stray dogs and hands them over to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or dog shelters. They stay there until the Beating Retreat ceremony concludes. Once all the ceremonies are over, the dogs will be released at the sites from where they were picked up.
For the civic agency, the practice is an annual affair around this time of the year. “We are not doing this because President Obama is coming. The exercise of clearing Rajpath of stray dogs and even monkeys is carried out every year for January 26,” said Jalaj Shrivastava, NDMC chairperson.
“So far we have lifted around 125 dogs and the process will continue. The dogs have been kept in Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre. The NGO will takes full care of them and we pay them feeding charges. Dogs, which are not vaccinated or sterilised, will be sterilised,” explained Dr Pramod Kumar, Head of NDMC Veterinary Hospital, Moti Bagh.
When asked how one knows a dog was picked from which location, he added, “Each dog gets a tag, on which the area, from where it was picked up, is written. That way we can put the dog back in its territory.”