India Supreme Court ruling updates & extends ruling against dog-feeding in high-traffic public places
NEW DELHI, India––A three-judge panel of the Supreme Court of India on November 7, 2025 ordered that stray dogs be removed and excluded from educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and depots, railway stations, and other government buildings.
The Supreme Court of India edict followed an August 22, 2025 ruling that banned public dog-feeding, required cities to designate safe feeding zones, and extended the verdict nationwide, otherwise directing compliance with the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023, requiring that street dogs be sterilized, vaccinated against rabies, and returned to wherever they were found.
[See Dog-feeders kill India’s national neuter/return no-kill dog control policy.]
Both Supreme Court of India verdicts directly clash with the traditional dog culture of India, where dogs are generally tolerated, but historically not often kept in homes and typically fed in courtyards, on stoops, in alleys, or near anywhere that produces food waste, such as open-air markets and butcher shops.
The immediate effect of the November 7, 2025 order, if enforced at the local level, will be to prevent street dogs from congregating at the most frequent points of conflict between dogs and humans, where dog-feeders have often habituated street dogs to seek food, and to accost other people, usually in packs, whom the dogs anticipate may have food.
“These dogs must be moved”
“These dogs, as per the orders, must be moved to a designated shelter after due sterilization and vaccination as per the Animal Birth Control rules,” explained OpIndia.com.
Introduced in 2003, the Animal Birth Control rules were most recently updated in 2023.
“The apex court has categorically said that these dogs ‘shall not be released back to the same location from which they were picked up,’” OpIndia.com added.
This order intensifies another problem, however: few Indian municipal animal shelters adequately house and feed the dogs they have already impounded. Even fewer have the space or the personnel to accommodate more.
Killing healthy dogs to open up shelter space is illegal in India.
Order could be lever to win decent pounds
The new Supreme Court of India order might in the short term fill dog pounds past any possibility of humane maintenance.
Conversely, the new Supreme Court of India order could become a lever for animal advocates to demand, and implement through the law, significant shelter expansion and improvement throughout the nation.
A precedent might be how the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966 changed U.S. pound practices in the U.S. by requiring a five-day minimum holding time before any dog or cat could be sold for biomedical research.
But shelter improvements in India, demanded by a much bigger and more politically influential animal advocacy sector than the U.S. had then, might come considerably faster.
What a difference the 1966 law made––slowly
Most U.S. animal shelters as of 1966 did not observe more than an overnight standard holding time. Most impounded dogs and cats were killed by decompression or gassing. Most pounds were not built to hold animals longer.
Animal shelter improvements indirectly mandated by the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966 took more than 50 years to become almost universal, impelled along the way by the rise of the animal rights movement in the 1970s-1980s. Animal rights advocacy then brought the abolition of gassing. Selling shelter animals to laboratory use was outlawed in 13 of the states where this had been most often done.
The advent of high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter programs meanwhile brought an 80% reduction in animal shelter intakes and killing.
Next, the no-kill movement rising in the 1995-2010 time frame brought the abolition of gassing shelter animals in almost all jurisdictions, and the eventual abolition of any use of impounded dogs and cats in laboratories.
(See NIH discontinues funding studies on “random source” dogs.)
Indian animal advocacy has ignored the urgent issues
Over the past fifteen years, though, Indian animal advocacy tends to have focused on preventing restrictions on dog-feeding and where dogs are allowed, rather than on either improving ABC efficacy, preventing dog attacks, or winning long overdue pound reform.
The three-judge bench of the 32-member Indian Supreme Court issuing the November 7, 2025 verdict included Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N.V. Anjaria, the same panel that issued the August 25, 2025 ruling.
Nath, Mehta, and Anjaria addressed where dogs may congregate only after addressing an even older and culturally more vexing problem: “sacred” cattle in the roads.
“Mothers of India” dumped in the roads
Cattle, in Hindu tradition, are the “mothers of India.” For that reason, few Indians eat beef. Historically, male calves were castrated and used to pull bullock carts, but motorized vehicles have almost entirely replaced bullock carts in most uses.
Having therefore little or no economic value, unwanted bull calves are now often abandoned to wander at large, along with milk cows who are no longer productive.
Relatively few are taken in by charitably managed pinjarapoles, or “cow shelters.”
Gaushalas
Only females still able to produce milk tend to be accepted into nonprofit or governmentally subsidized gaushalas.
Defined by law as agricultural institutions, typically operating as commercial dairies, gaushalas often breed cattle, ostensibly to conserve native genetic traits, but in reality mostly to keep the resident cows producing milk.
(See #DontGetMilked makes a splash in the heart of hypocritical cow worship.)
The Jodhpur bench of the Rajasthan High Court on August 13, 2025 ordered the Rajasthan state government to “remove all cattle and other animals from public roads and highways to prevent accidents caused by them,” OpIndia.com summarized.
“Article 21 guarantees the right to life and safety”
“Citing Article 21 of the Constitution of India that guarantees the right to life and safety,” OpIndia.com reported, “the court reaffirmed the Rajasthan High Court’s directions and extended them” to all levels of government.
“The court specifically said that the animals must be relocated to gaushalas, in the case of cattle,” OpIndia.com continued, “and designated shelters, in the case of other animals including dogs,” where all impounded animals “should be provided with all necessary food, water, and veterinary care in accordance with the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 and the Animal Birth Control rules 2023.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Inadequate implentation” of ABC
The three-judge panel then addressed “the removal of dogs from educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and depots, and railway stations,” again invoking Article 21 of the Constitution of India, OpIndia.com said.
Of concern to the court, OpIndia.com explained, was “inadequate implementation of sterilization programs, improper disposal of food waste, absence of effective perimeter management and institutional coordination,” to keep unsterilized dogs from wandering into habitat where the dog population has been reduced, “and lack of widespread public awareness regarding preventive conduct and post-dog bite medical procedures.”
The Supreme Court of India discussion took note that there were 3.7 million reported dog bites in India during 2024, and 2.6 million in the first half of 2025.
Short time
The Supreme Court of India order allowed governmental bodies only eight weeks to evict and impound street dogs from educational institutions, hospitals, public sports complexes, bus stands and depots, and railway stations, likely not nearly enough time to build, buy, or renovate the holding facilities that full implementation of the order would require.
Commented longtime Blue Cross of India board president Chinny Krishna, who introduced the prototype Animal Birth Control program in Chennai in 1966, “Following the pronouncement of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on November 7, 2025, the Times of India conducted a nationwide poll,” finding that “59% acknowledge a war between dog lovers and haters, 86% identify themselves as dog lovers, 85% say they are not affected by stray dogs at all, and 83% do not see stray dogs as a safety problem at all.”
Krishna called upon “the silent majority” to “write polite letters to the Supreme Court asking for a review of the case.”
As a general rule of local politics, however, worldwide, as opposed to addressing national issues involving strong divisions of opinion, anything that upsets even 5% of the public is usually considered an appropriate topic for legislation.
Release points
Indian Supreme Court justices Nath, Mehta, and Anjaria in their August 22, 2025 decision on feeding street dogs “clarified that stray dogs must be released to their original areas after sterlization, deworming, and immunization, except for those infected with rabies, suspected of rabies infection, or exhibiting aggressive behavior,” the Times of India summarized at the time.
Explained Nath, Mehta, and Anjaria then, “The provision that dogs should be relocated to the same locality from which they have been picked up prevents overcrowding in dog shelters and pounds,” and “is a compassionate treatment,” which enables the dogs to continue their historical and still necessary roles as rat hunters and consumers of refuse left on the streets.
Nath, Mehta, and Anjaria took note then of testimony from “some of the counsels appearing for animal lovers that the process of sterilization and inoculation has worked wonders in many towns across the country and has significantly brought down the population of stray dogs.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
Their November 7, 2025 follow-up ruling upholds their previous findings, but excludes returning dogs impounded for sterilization and vaccination from return to “educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and depots, railway stations, and other government buildings,” where, if present, the dogs might continue to menace others and perhaps jeopardize themselves amid typically heavy traffic.
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Not a dog person at all, and wishing everyone could go about their business, wherever they live, without the concern of being intimidated by dogs or having to encounter their waste everywhere.
Sharing with gratitude.
I agree with you. My long-term partner was diagnosed with Stage 4 esophageal cancer in March of this year. He was hospitalized for placement of a feeding tube, blood clot filter and a chemo port. I got off the elevator on his floor and saw a man walking a German shepherd to a room. I asked the nurses if it was a “therapy dog” and they said that it belonged to a woman currently on the floor. I said how disgusting it was for a filthy dog to be allowed in a hospital. All of the nurses looked shocked. I do not like dogs and I don’t care who knows it. Most especially dogs in hospitals and grocery stores. UGH!
Reading the first two hateful comments, I am disgusted by the pure nastiness of people. I shudder to think what they must be teaching their children. There are appropriate ways of ensuring proper safeguards and simple common sense for animals that should be taken, with regard to hospitals, schools, and other public facilities.
With regard to the man bringing the German shepherd to visit his owner in the hospital, a well-cared for pet is hardly a “filthy” dog, and more attentive and loving to his owner than children who don’t visit. There are people who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom who are filthier than any animal. There are people I wouldn’t ever shake hands with (and I can think of two right off the bat) but I would never hesitate to pet an animal.
I would admonish these two heartless people that any problem with domesticated animals is caused by PEOPLE. Animal waste PALES in comparison to human garbage and trash. Pet owners of dogs AND cats should care properly for their pets and make sure they aren’t out roaming and causing problems, and local governments need better policies of management for stray animals – which exist because people were careless in spaying/neutering them.
There are three levels of consideration that should be taken into account in deciding whether a public space, including stores, schools, government offices, and hospitals, is appropriately open to dogs. ANIMALS 24-7 finds that usually none of these have been adequately reviewed, with the only thought given to the matter being the desire of the location management to please dog-owning clients.
The first consideration should be whether the location is appropriate to the needs of the dog. Stores, schools, government offices, and hospitals are by definition busy, often high-stress environments, full of hurrying strangers & all sorts of unfamiliar sights, sounds, & smells for a dog. Dragging any dog into such an environment is usually stressful to the point of cruelty to the dog. We would not think of taking our own dogs into stores, schools, government offices, and hospitals for these very reasons, over & above the considerable risk these days of our dogs encountering pit bulls, an accidental meeting in a store aisle having recently resulted in serious injury to a friend’s dog.
The second consideration should be for other people in the stores, schools, government offices, and hospitals. Apart from people who are afraid of dogs, or allergic to dogs, there is the omnipresent risk of someone accidentally tripping and falling over a dog’s leash or even the dog. For older people, especially older women with osteoporosis, a hard fall can be life-changing, perhaps even to the point of fatality. It is simply unfair and grossly inconsiderate to expose others to such easily avoidable risk––which can also result from a dog leaping up on someone in enthusiastic greeting or anticipation of a treat.
The third consideration must be for the staff of the stores, schools, government offices, and hospitals. Every dog owner claims to have a clean, well-trained dog, but reality is that dogs in public places do often defecate and urinate inappropriately, sometimes splashing merchandise on lower shelves, and it is the workers who have to clean up the messes. Messes from dropped and spilled merchandise, and from sick patients, are frequent in stores and hospitals, and cleaning them up is a routine part of working in a store or hospital, but it is unfair and unreasonable to increase the clean-up crew’s workload when this can so easily be avoided.
Our observation, including over many decades of both owning and advocating for dogs, is that the overwhelming majority of human antipathy toward dogs is manufactured by the frequently thoughtless (or passive-aggressive) behavior of alleged dog-lovers who insist on putting their dogs into inappropriate situations, fail to acknowledge the consequences, and unfairly blame the victims for any consequences, including bites, falls, and sometimes even fatal attacks.
Feeding street dogs in busy public places, including at bus depots and train stations in India, also falls into this category. If one genuinely wants all others to love or at least tolerate dogs, the process begins with allowing others to encounter dogs of their own volition, not as a sudden startling and potentially problematic disruption, whether in a store, school, government office or hospital, or in a public park, along a jogging and hiking trail, or in one’s yard or at the mailbox.
Increasing tolerance of dogs (and cats, too, albeit that cats are less often as problematic) begins with practicing consideration for others. (We don’t take our cats into public places or allow them to roam, either.)
The issue was not with a country or community’s policy toward domestic animals in specific public environments (and yes, there should be a clear policy, possibly allowing only limited, specified areas for domestic animals in places like hospitals and schools, etc.).
The issue was the openly hateful comments by two people. Any logical comments they made were overshadowed by their pure revilement of dogs of ANY kind. I am surprised they even read this publication, with such a level of extreme loathing of “mans best friend.”
But at least now we know who they are. As the old Irish curse goes:
“May those who love us, love us;
And for those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we will know them by their limping.”
ANIMALS 24-7 welcomes both readers whose concern is for all animals, including the human animal, and those whose attachment & concern is for specific animals, species, or orders, some of those readers to the exclusion of humanity, dogs, cats, snakes, etcetera –– and some for understandable reason. Many of our readers, for instance, have been victims of dog attacks, or have lost pets and family members to dog attacks, in some cases a child.
Of the two readers in question, one has been a devoted reader, frequent commenter, and sometimes a donor for more than 33 years. Both, we understand, are among those who have lost someone important to them to dog attacks.
It is indeed a terrible tragedy to lose a loved one to a dog attack and I’m sorry to hear that.
However, while some breeds are more prone to aggression due to genetics, dogs are not generally inherently violent. A dog’s behavior is heavily shaped by its environment and treatment. Aggressive behavior is communication that something is wrong, and in most cases, the owner’s management, training, and care (or abuse/neglect) of the dog are the primary determining factors in attacks. It still gets back to the fact that it is the HUMAN OWNER who abuses, neglects, or uses aversive, physical punishment-based training methods that often make their dogs more aggressive.
There are also people who are alive only because a dog saved them.