NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has sought the stand of the Centre and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi on a petition challenging the civic body’s power to ‘detain” and ‘destroy’ unregistered and unclaimed dogs found wandering in public places.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad issued a notice on the public interest litigation petition filed by Kamini Khanna, who has claimed that she has moved the plea on behalf of all dogs of Delhi and that the recent incidents of dog bites in Noida and Ghaziabad were staged.
The petition has also challenged MCD’s advisory asking citizens to register their pets in light of an increasing number of dog-bite cases and sought a direction to restrain the authorities from removing, killing or harming any street dog.
It has been argued that caregivers may be discouraged from providing meals to the community dogs as they would want to wriggle out of the responsibility to get the dogs registered, which would deprive the animals of one decent meal and give arbitrary power to the MCD to kill, remove or detain dogs, which could also result in extortion and can have serious implication on law and order.