PETA India’s Point-by-Point on the Supreme Court’s Dog and Cattle Directions
On 19 May 2026, the Supreme Court of India issued various directions regarding community dogs and stray cattle. Below, PETA India reproduces the relevant portion of the top Court’s directions and provide PETA India’s brief view on each point grounded in PETA India’s two science-based Roadmaps—our “Roadmap for Humane Management of Community Dogs in India” and “Roadmap for the Humane Management of Stray Cattle in India”—which emphasise lawful, evidence-based, humane solutions on addressing community dog and cattle populations, while opposing approaches that amount to lifelong jailing or indiscriminate killing.
The Court’s order dated 19 May 2026 is reproduced below (with emphasis added), and PETA India’s take on each point can be found below each point in bold.
In view of the aforesaid, this Court deems it appropriate to issue the following directions:
A. The States and Union Territories shall forthwith take decisive, coordinated and time-bound steps for enhancing and augmenting the infrastructure necessary for effective implementation of the Animal Birth Control framework, including the expansion of sterilisation and vaccination capacity, strengthening of existing facilities, and creation of additional institutional mechanisms commensurate with the scale and urgency of the issue.
Good. The Supreme Court recognizes the current dog population is due to local authorities failing to implement the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules despite them being in place since 2001.
B. The States and Union Territories shall ensure the establishment of at least one fully functional Animal Birth Control Centre in each district, duly equipped with requisite veterinary infrastructure, trained personnel, surgical facilities and supporting logistics, so as to enable the systematic, continuous and largescale implementation of sterilisation and vaccination programmes. Such centres shall be made operational in a time-bound manner and shall function with adequate capacity to address the local population of stray dogs, with proper record-keeping, monitoring and periodic reporting to ensure effective and sustained implementation of the Animal Birth Control framework. It is further directed that, having regard to the population density and territorial extent of each district, the concerned departments of the States and Union Territories shall take an appropriate decision with respect to the expansion of the number of Animal Birth Control Centres, wherever necessary, so as to ensure effective coverage and implementation of the Animal Birth Control framework.
Good. However, there are also other ways to ensure sterilisation in smaller towns. PETA India has recommended, in addition to the existing framework under law, ABC capacity could be supplemented through smaller scale efforts that should be encouraged by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI). These can include but are not limited to private veterinary hospitals that are willing to carry out ABC, volunteers who use networks of veterinary clinics, temporary sterilisation camps by NGOs to reach remote areas, mobile ABC units, and NGOs willing to carry out sterilisation on a small scale but at their own cost. To bridge this gap, the AWBI should create guidance to encourage small-scale efforts.
C. The concerned departments/authorities of the States and Union Territories shall take all necessary measures to implement the directions issued by this Court, and shall ensure that the same are carried out in letter as well as in spirit, without any delay or dilution, and shall also strictly comply with the Standard Operating Procedures issued by the Animal Welfare Board of India in this regard.
Bad (in part). PETA India has urged the Court to stay the implementation of AWBI’s SOP, which recommends large-scale shelters that allot a mere 20 square feet per dog—roughly the size of a traditional funeral pyre. Caging dogs like this would institutionalise cruelty, increase the risk of zoonotic and other disease, divert public resources away from the requirements of the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023—i.e. sterilisation and vaccination against rabies—and inevitably collapse under its own weight.
D. The concerned departments/authorities of the States and Union Territories, as well as the Union of India (in respect of public areas/spaces falling within its jurisdiction), shall take an informed and reasoned decision regarding the extension of the directions issued by this Court to other public spaces characterised by high footfall and public utility, including but not limited to places of public congregation and transit, having due regard to the necessity of ensuring a safe and secure environment for public at large. Such decision shall be taken upon a careful assessment of ground realities, risk to public safety, and the functional nature of such spaces, and shall be implemented in a time-bound and coordinated manner so as to ensure uniformity and effectiveness in enforcement.
Bad. This opens the door for the demonisation, removal and jailing of community dogs across even more public spaces. With an estimated 62 million free-roaming dogs in India, there is no infrastructure, funding, or administrative capacity to confine even a fraction of the population without causing mass suffering and public-health risks.
E. The States and Union Territories shall undertake comprehensive capacity-building measures, including training of personnel, augmentation of veterinary services, strengthening of vaccination drives and creation of adequate shelter facilities, in coordination with relevant departments and agencies.
Good (with an important caveat). PETA India supports all efforts toward humane capture, safe surgery, and rabies control. However, “shelter facilities” must not become permanent prisons. Shelters should function only as temporary recovery/hospital facilities supporting ABC, not lifelong confinement except where the animal cannot be released back into the streets due to age, permanent disability or infirmity.
F. The States and Union Territories shall also ensure adequate availability of anti-rabies vaccines and immunoglobulin in all Government medical facilities, and shall put in place effective public health response mechanisms to deal with cases of dog bites.
Good. PETA India supports strengthening public safety measures.
G. The NHAI shall, in coordination with the concerned States and Union Territories, formulate and implement a comprehensive and time-bound mechanism for addressing the presence of stray cattle and other animals on National Highways and National Expressways, including the deployment of specialised transport vehicles for the safe handling and relocation of stray cattle and other animals, and the creation or earmarking of appropriate holding and shelter facilities, and entering into appropriate arrangements with animal welfare organisations, gaushalas, and other competent agencies for their safe handling and relocation. The NHAI shall also establish an effective monitoring and coordination framework to ensure continuous oversight and prompt response in such matters.
BAD (as framed). This is an out-of-sight-out-of-mind impractical approach that ignores the root cause of stray cattle which is abandonment by dairies. There are an estimated 5 million stray cattle (and counting due to dairy industry abandonment) in India. There is no infrastructure, funding, or administrative capacity to confine even a fraction of the population without triggering enormous suffering and mass disease outbreaks.
For stray cattle PETA India recommends stronger penalties against abandonment; closure of illegal dairies; mechanisms to trace abandoned cattle back to dairies; regulation of gaushalas to prevent breeding and food policies promoting plant-based milk production to reduce dependency on milk from cattle and eventually reducing the cattle numbers.
H. In areas where the population of stray dogs has assumed alarming proportions and where incidents of dog bites or aggressive attacks have become frequent and pose a continuing threat to public safety, the concerned authorities may, subject to due assessment by qualified veterinary experts and strictly in accordance with the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 and other applicable statutory protocols, take such measures as may be legally permissible, including euthanasia in cases involving rabid, incurably ill or demonstrably dangerous/aggressive dogs, so as to effectively curb the threat posed to human life and safety.
Bad. PETA India recognises that rabid/incurably ill cases require lawful veterinary action, but the wording creates scope for misuse—especially the elastic category of “dangerous/aggressive,” which can be weaponised for indiscriminate killing or for removing healthy dogs in the guise of safety. PETA India explicitly opposes mass killing of dogs as a substitute for ABC.
I. It is made emphatically clear that the officers and officials of the municipal authorities, Panchayati Raj institutions, local bodies and the concerned departments of the States and Union Territories, autonomous bodies/institutions and the persons in-charge of all other institutions, i.e., schools, colleges, hospitals, etc., who are entrusted with the implementation of the directions issued by this Court, shall be entitled to due protection for acts performed by them in good faith and in bona fide discharge of their official duties and compliances carried out pursuant to the present order and the earlier orders passed by this Court in the present proceedings. Accordingly, no First Information Report, criminal complaint or coercive proceedings shall ordinarily be initiated against such officers or officials in respect of actions bona fide undertaken for the purpose of implementing the directions issued by this Court, save and except where a prima facie case of mala fides, gross abuse of authority or actions wholly dehors the directions issued by this Court is made out. If necessary, the High Court in seisin of the continuing mandamus in terms of the present order shall be at liberty to pass appropriate orders to prevent frivolous, vexatious or malicious proceedings against such officers or officials.
Bad. Nobody is above the law, and this direction gives the false impression that frivolous FIRs are being filed when in fact, up to hundreds of dogs are sometimes killed at a time by local authorities as a replacement for ABC.
How you can help: read PETA India’s Roadmaps and write to and encourage your state animal husbandry and local municipal officials to take up the recommendations. The State-level Roadmap for dogs can be found here and for cattle here. And importantly, always adopt a dog who needs a home from a shelter or the street, reject breeders and pet shops, and put out clean water for community animals.
