Chandigarh: Senior animal welfare activists, a senior advocate, and community animals' caregivers held a high impact press conference in Chandigarh today to highlight the gross illegal activities of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation causing repeated cruelty to community dogs.
The press conference included advocate Sidharth Arora, lawyer at the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Deeksha Bhalaik a senior policy professional with an international animal rights organization, Harsh Gupta an animal welfare activist , advocate and Mrs Khari, a veteran animal feeder, caregiver and volunteer at SPCA.
They pointed out that the latest orders to pick up dogs from institutions in the city grossly violates the Directives of the Honorable Supreme Court's 7th November interim order and the Animal Birth Control Rule, 2023.
They also highlighted that the Chandigarh Administration does not have a Legally designated shelter as mentioned in tje interim order. Further as advocate Sidharth Arora mentioned, the "SPCA is illegally used to dump animals caught for unverified, dog bites which is actually a Society for Prevention of Cruelty and should be a hospital for sick animals." They pointed out that the SPCA is in shambles with a mortality rate of 80%, and gross medical negligence.
Deeksha remarked that "that the Chandigarh Municipal Commissioner and Medical Officer of Health has repeatedly given orders to catch sterilised, vaccinated dogs even after advocacy efforts to show them the illegality. These dogs are dumped in the SPCA where they are undergoing deep anguish deeply suffering. She laid out the facts that show that the Chandigarh Administration is deeply lacking in most areas of the implementation of the ABC Rules that mandate awareness programs by professionals on dog behavior and peaceful co-existence and feeding of these dogs according to the law.
Animal activist Harsh said " Even the Animal Birth Control Centre is functioning illegally without a certification of the Animal Welfare Board of India. This centre has had over 100 deaths in the past 3 months (a abnormality at any such centre in India) which the MC Chandigarh has not collected as data" Mrs Khari mentioned that - "There is only one senior veterinary doctor across the ABC Centre, SPCA and Gaushala for almost 1000 animals. This is is huge violation under the legal framework too. The cows in the MC Gaushala are also extremely neglected, suffering with many mortalities there every week".
The participants showed the deeply serious nature of these illegalities of the Chandigarh Administration and pointed that a Union Terriroty functioning in this light is very concerning. They demanded serious, urgent, immediate action according to the law, humaneness, compassion and scientifically recognized animal welfare standards from the Chandigarh Administration.
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