The matter was taken up by Chief Justice of India B R Gavai on Wednesday from the two-judge bench which on Tuesday ordered pan-India culling of strays across the National Capital Region (NCR). National Capital Region (NCR) cities’ streets, and ordered Supreme Court hearing of the matter on Thursday before a 3-judge Supreme Court bench led by Justice Vikram Nath.

Order on removing all strays from Delhi, NCR withdrawn

On August 11, a bench of Justice J B Pardiwala had ordered the Delhi government and civic bodies in NCR to resolve the stray dog issue India by capturing the dogs from Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, Gurgaon and its outskirts and shifting them to any shelter home or pound within a specified timeframe.

Acting on the representations of two counsels - one of them on grounds that the order appeared to be in conflict with an earlier SC judgment by a different bench - Following the request of animal control laws activists, a bench led by CJI Gavai on Wednesday withdrew all existing pet control laws from Pardiwala’s bench and sent the case for further hearing to the bench of Justices Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N V Anjaria.

On May 9 last year, a bench of Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Sanjay Karol passed a detailed order disposing of more than two dozen petitions by Kerala government, Animal Welfare Board, NGOs and animal rights activists who had raised objections over contradictory orders passed by different high courts in the state on the culling of stray dogs.

On Wednesday morning, the CJI was told by a counsel that the August 11 order by the Supreme Court was also in conflict with a past Supreme Court order last year which had asked civic bodies to treat the strays with compassion and strictly in accordance with the ABC Rules, 2023.

Justice Maheshwari and Justice Karol last year had made it clear that dogs cannot be culled on a large scale and directed that civic authorities must act only with the object and intent of the relevant provisions of the existing laws.