Just when it seemed the Supreme Court had overreached beyond repair with its August stray-dog directions,
the Court returned on 7 November with a new order that appears to walk back the worst excesses, only to quietly introduce an entirely new layer of illegality. Yes, the Court has now “restored” the lawful principle of sterilise–vaccinate–return mandated under the ABC Rules, 2023, implicitly acknowledging that the earlier “zero-release” diktat was untenable. But beneath this veneer of correction lies a fresh wave of judicial law-making: new categories of dogs invented out of thin air (“aggressive dogs”), sweeping bans on dogs in institutions not authorised by any statute, mass-removal directions never contemplated by Parliament, and an expansion of executive-style micromanagement across schools, hospitals, stadiums, highways, bus depots, and railway stations.
A Step Forward, Three Steps Back
If the August orders looked like the Supreme Court had wandered off into executive territory with a bulldozer, the 7 November 2025 order arrives as a sort of judicial broom, sweeping up some of the earlier mess, while quietly scattering new dust piles across the Constitution. On paper, this order appears more refined, more measured, and more “balanced.” It begins by reminding us that the Court has now “supplemented, modified and clarified” its earlier directions. That sounds comforting, like the Court has recognised the legal storm it triggered. And to be fair, it has. In paragraph 2, the Court reinstates the very heart of the ABC Rules, 2023:
sterilise, vaccinate, deworm and crucially, release dogs back to the same locality.
This one line is an admission, however veiled, that the August 11 “no-release” diktat was legally indefensible. After all, you don’t “clarify” an earlier order by replacing its core command with the opposite unless you realise it wouldn’t survive judicial or public scrutiny. For a fleeting moment, it almost feels like a return to constitutional sanity.
But constitutional sanity is short-lived. The very next breath introduces a brand-new judicial invention:
dogs showing “aggressive behaviour” shall not be released.
Aggressive behaviour according to whom? The municipal worker with no training? A panicked school principal? A neighbour who doesn’t like dogs? A frightened bystander? Or worse, an official who finds it administratively convenient to label half the population “aggressive”? The term has no definition in the PCA Act, no recognition in the ABC Rules, and no scientific basis in global dog behaviour protocols. It is judge-made law in its purest, rawest form, and like most untested legal experiments involving living beings, it is ripe for arbitrariness, abuse, and cruelty. A dog that barks, a dog that runs, a dog that guards its territory, each becomes a candidate for permanent detention.
If August was judicial overreach, November becomes judicial engineering,constructing an entirely new legal regime from words that do not exist anywhere in the statutory architecture.
Institutional Spaces: A Jurisdiction Without Logic
Then comes the real pivot: the order expands its reach into every institutional space in India. Schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, medical colleges, sports complexes, bus depots, inter-state bus terminals, railway stations, nothing escapes the sweep of this judicial net.
The Court now orders that every stray dog found in any such premises must be immediately removed and never returned, even after sterilisation. This is the resurrection of the August illegality, now dressed in institutional attire.
The irony is breathtaking:
- The Court praises the ABC Rules in one sentence,
- And violates their central command in the next.
The ABC Rules mandate return-to-site, because community dogs are territorial and prevent unsterilised newcomers from entering. But the Court’s new institutional carve-out creates legal dog-free zones that have no basis in the Act or Rules. In fact, the Rules explicitly emphasise coexistence, community feeding, and designated feeding points, not exclusion zones sealed off like canine quarantine camps.
The judiciary has, in effect, created the first category of civilly exiled dogs, permanently displaced for being found in the wrong postal code.
Micromanagement as Judicial Policy
The November order then launches into executive hyperdrive. It directs:
- Boundary walls and gates in all institutions,
- Nodal officers in each establishment,
- Quarterly inspections by municipal bodies,
- State-wide surveillance teams,
- Highway patrols for cattle and dogs,
- Signage installations across the country,
- Helpline numbers on every highway,
- Mandatory vaccine stockpiling in hospitals,
- SOPs to be drafted by the AWBI.
This is not adjudication.
This is not interpretation.
This is not constitutional oversight.
This is akin to running a parallel Union Government, complete with architecture plans, sanitation schedules, animal-removal protocols, highway engineering, and institutional surveillance grids.
Separation of powers isn’t merely blurred here, it’s been painted over in opaque gloss.
The Mask of Public Safety
The November order repeatedly invokes Article 21, the right to life, as a sword against the presence of dogs in public institutions. But public safety is not a blank cheque that allows the judiciary to rewrite statutory frameworks or erase the rights of animals recognised by the Court itself in AWBI v. Nagaraja (2014). In that landmark ruling, the Supreme Court elevated animal welfare to constitutional status, acknowledging animals’ right to live with dignity.
The November order, however, pivots the narrative: instead of asking why municipalities failed to implement sterilisation, waste management, perimeter control, or feeding-point regulation, it assumes incorrectly that the presence of dogs itself is the problem. This sleight of hand shifts the blame from dysfunctional institutions to the dogs who inhabit those spaces, turning victims of administrative neglect into culprits slated for removal.
The Impossible Blueprint
Let’s talk practicality, because the Constitution certainly does.
Consider the scale of what the Court has ordered:
- 16 lakh schools
- 69,000 hospitals and health centres
- 800+ universities
- Thousands of stadiums and sports complexes
- 18,000+ railway stations
- 2,000+ inter-state bus terminals
There is no country in the world with shelters capable of accommodating the sheer number of dogs that such a directive would displace. India certainly isn’t the first.
Where will these dogs go?
Who will feed them?
What will prevent overcrowding diseases like distemper, parvo, or kennel cough?
How will territorial stress be managed?
Where will the budget come from?
Who will track the dogs’ health?
The November order offers no answers, only commands.
The cruelty lies not in the language but in the absence of feasibility.
A Correction That Creates New Fault Lines
At first glance, the November order appears more lawful than its August predecessor. It embraces sterilise–vaccinate–return, respects the ABC Rules superficially, and avoids inflammatory rhetoric. But beneath the surface, it contains three critical legal fractures:
1. It invents new legal categories without legislative basis
(“Aggressive dogs” / “Institutional exclusion zones”)
2. It contradicts the very Rules it claims to uphold
(Non-release is expressly prohibited in the ABC Rules)
3. It deepens judicial overreach into executive policymaking
(Directing infrastructure, administrative procedures, patrol teams, helplines, SOPs)
If August was the moment the Court strayed, November is the moment it tried to return, only to wander onto a different, equally unconstitutional path.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The November order is not merely a corrective, it is a recalibration that still stands outside the boundaries of statutory law. It provides fertile ground for review, reconsideration, and robust constitutional challenge. And as the Court prepares to consider compliance reports from every State and UT on 13 January 2026, the stakes could not be higher.
India now stands at a crossroads:
Will we choose a path anchored in law, science, and humanity?Or will we allow judicial anxiety to eclipse constitutional discipline?The November order may have softened the tone, but it has sharpened the contradictions.
Conclusion: When the Law Strays, the Nation Must Lead It Home
The story of India’s stray dogs in 2025 is not really about dogs at all. It is about the law. It is about constitutional discipline. It is about the limits of judicial power. And above all, it is about who we become when we face fear: do we respond with reason, or do we resort to removal? The August order was a panic-driven leap into illegality, a judicial attempt to solve a complex public problem by erasing the very beings whose welfare the law protects. The November order, while dressed in more careful language, does not undo the damage. It merely shifts the method, not the mindset. It allows release on one hand but creates sweeping zones of exclusion on the other. It acknowledges the ABC Rules but then amputates their heart. It invokes Article 21 but forgets Article 51A(g). It demands compassion in principle, while permitting displacement in practice.
What the August and November orders together reveal is something deeper: a judiciary struggling between outrage and restraint, between constitutional fidelity and administrative frustration. But constitutionalism requires more than good intentions. It requires boundaries. The role of the Supreme Court is to interpret and enforce the law, not to write new animal-control policies, not to run sanitation regimes, not to micromanage campus architecture and highway patrol grids. When judges become policymakers, even with the best of motives, they risk flattening the complexity of governance into a single stroke of judicial will. And in the process, they risk trampling the rights of humans and animals that the Constitution entrusts them to guard.
The cruelty embedded in these orders is not born of malice but of impossibility. You cannot confine lakhs of territorial animals without inflicting suffering. You cannot create “dog-free” zones without creating “detention-full” shelters. You cannot banish dogs from campuses, hospitals, highways, and stations without producing the very chaos the ABC Rules were designed to prevent. This is why the WHO warns against mass-removal. This is why global epidemiology studies emphasise return-to-site. This is why the ABC Rules exist. Science, law, morality, for once, are all aligned. It is the orders that stray.
The path forward is neither sentimental nor simplistic. It demands something far more difficult: a return to the rule of law. It demands recognition that the ABC Rules, 2023, are the product of decades of public health research, judicial oversight, and legislative action, not an optional suggestion to be rewritten in moments of outrage. It demands respect for natural justice, the right of animal-welfare organisations to be heard, the right of experts to inform policy, the right of citizens to challenge executive and judicial excess. It demands humility from every institution of governance, including the Court.
And above all, it demands a reaffirmation of India’s moral compass. Gandhi’s reminder, that the greatness of a nation is judged by how it treats its animals, is not a quote for textbooks. It is a living doctrine. It asks us to confront our fears without abandoning our compassion. It asks us to uphold law not only when it is convenient, but when it is tested. It asks us to protect the vulnerable, even when the vulnerable cannot thank us, vote for us, or defend themselves.
The August and November orders mark a troubling moment in our legal history, one where the lines between adjudication and administration blurred, and where the rights of animals, citizens, and institutions were swept into a nationwide experiment. But moments like these also create opportunities. They invite civil society, lawyers, scholars, caregivers, and citizens to reclaim the conversation. They invite Parliament to clarify the law further. They invite the Supreme Court itself, upon reflection, to correct course.
The fight ahead is not just for India’s street dogs, though their fate is reason enough. It is for the Constitution. It is for the balance of powers. It is for the idea that justice is not merely the power to direct, but the humility to listen. And in the end, it is for the India we wish to be: a nation where law leads with wisdom, and compassion follows not by force, but by conviction.
LawUmbrella 