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New Delhi: Noting that most states have not complied with its order to take steps to remove stray dogs from premises of public institutions and implement the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules for vaccination and sterilisation, Supreme Court on Wednesday said these states “will get a proper dressing down”.A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N V Anjaria, while going through the affidavit filed by the states, said the information provided was vague, merely an eyewash, and contained fudged figures. The court was shocked after going through Jharkhand’s affidavit which claimed that nearly 1.9 lakh dogs were sterilised in the last two months. SC pointed out that manpower and infrastructure deployed by the state could not result in sterilisation of such a large number of dogs within such a short period of time.After SC passed the order on Nov 7 last year, the Jharkhand govt took action to implement the ABC Rules, and it claimed to have sterilised “1.89 lakh dogs” in contrast to Delhi that takes a year to sterilise around one lakh dogs.“It is all fudged up figures… All states make vague statements. It is an eyewash. They will get a proper dressing down,” the bench said.Senior advocate Gaurav Agarwal, who is assisting the bench as amicus curiae, brought to the court’s notice the deficiencies in the states’ responses after examining each of the affidavits filed by them. The court was also informed that there were 1.66 lakh dog bites reported in Assam in 2024 but the state has only one dog centre. “It is astonishing. In 2024 there were 1.66 lakh bites. And, in 2025 only in Jan, there were 20,900. This is shocking,” the top court said.The responses filed by the states were also silent on many issues, including the number of stray dogs, dog pounds, ABC centres and human resources employed by them to remove strays from institutions.SC in Nov directed that stray dogs be removed from the premises of educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands/depots and railway stations.
