Dogs are posing a scare for flights landing and taking off at the Delhi International Airport but despite the sad situation, there is hardly anything the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) can do about it. Reason being that the law permits municipal bodies only to sterilise stray canines and not to relocate them from one place to another.
Faced with this dilemma, the SDMC approached the Supreme Court on Wednesday asking what is to be done to overcome the problem prevailing at the Delhi International Airport. The agency chose to approach the Court as the debate on whether stray dogs, which are increasingly posing as a menace to humans, can be eliminated or not is presently on in a bunch of PIls where the Centre, States and Animal Welfare Board (AWB) are represented.
Appearing before a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and PC Pant, advocate Rakesh Kumar, who represented the municipal agency, showed a letter written by the Delhi International Airport limited (DIAl) on January 7, 2016 seeking urgent relocation of stray canines from the vicinity of IGI Airport. “This menace is on the rise and raises a concern over the safety of passengers and can lead to any untoward incident,” said the letter addressed by Col. Rohini Kumar Pathak, Heads of landside Operations for DIAl.
Kumar said that the SDMC’s hands are tied due to the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules 2001which states that after sterilization, dogs have to be released at the same place or locality from where they are captured. “There is no provision to relocate the dogs from one area to another are under the above Rules.” When SDMC informed AWB of this problem, all that the latter did was to allow the dogs to be picked up from the operation area (runway) and relocated to the parking lots at IGI Airport. But with time, these dogs find their way back to the runway, Kumar informed.
The bench acknowledged the problem and asked the Centre and AWB to examine the issue and sort out the problem. As regards the problem faced by humans due to stray dog bites, which often turn fatal, the bench asked all states and Union Territories to submit report on the number of dog bite deaths, steps taken for sterilization and resource available to tackle the menace and submit to Court and AWB within six weeks. Thereafter, the Court asked AWB to prepare a Module that balances both interests — compassion to stray dogs and healthy existence of human beings. The matter will be heard next on July 12.