Members of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) are up in arms against the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for its attitude towards stray dogs. The assistant secretary of the AWB has filed a complaint with the member-secretary of the State Animal Welfare Board, copied to the Commissioner of Animal Husbandry and the BBMP Chief Commissioner, for allegedly relocating 10 community dogs from a tech park at Iblur to the outskirts of the city illegally.
In the complaint, the assistant secretary, Prachi Jain, said the board had learnt about the incident through an email complaint about the alleged illegal relocation of all the community dogs from Vaishnavi Tech Square at Iblur, Bellandur, to a shelter home at Bidadi outside BBMP jurisdiction.
The complaint also alleged that the BBMP has facilitated this illegal relocation, quoting the AWBI community dog adoption procedure circular, and none of the 10 dogs was adopted to homes and no AWBI-recognised AWOs or SPCA members were involved in the adoption.
The board issued an advisory on May 17, 2022, requesting all the Chief Secretaries, the Director-General of Police of all States and Union Territories, the State Animal Welfare Boards, district collectors, and the municipal commissioner of States and UTs for the adoption of community dogs, detailing the necessary protocol which must be followed while adopting a community dog to ensure the proper welfare of the animal and to prevent any unnecessary pain or suffering to it.
The Government of India recently notified Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 (as per sub-rule 19 of Rule 11 of Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023), which states that dogs shall be released at the same place or locality from where they were captured and the date, time and place of their release shall be recorded after their complete recovery and the representative of the local authority or the animal welfare organisation shall accompany the team at the time of the release and from time to time. Thus, stray dogs cannot be displaced and relocated from their territory in contravention to the above rule.
