'In 48 hours, lakhs of dogs from Ghaziabad and Faridabad will reach here'; Maneka Gandhi lashes out at Supreme Court order

NEW DELHI: Former Union Minister, animal rights activist, and BJP leader Maneka Gandhi has strongly criticised the Supreme Court’s order to move stray dogs in the Delhi-NCR region to shelters. She called the order impractical and said it would harm the ecological balance.

On Monday, the Supreme Court directed that all stray dogs be removed immediately from Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, and Ghaziabad. Responding to this, Maneka Gandhi said that removing all dogs at once could create new problems.

“In 48 hours, about three lakh dogs from Ghaziabad and Faridabad will come here because Delhi has food. Once the dogs are removed, monkeys will take over the streets. I have seen this happen at my own home. Don’t you remember what happened in Paris in the 1880s? When dogs and cats were removed, the rat population exploded, creating serious threats to hygiene and health,” she said.

According to the research paper “Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris”, in 1883, concerns about rabies led to efforts to control the city’s dog population. At that time, dogs barking at horses pulling carriages- then the main mode of transport- was also seen as a problem. But after the number of dogs decreased, the rat population grew, leading to diseases spread by them.