Are States building castles in the air about facilities to sterilise stray dogs, Supreme Court asks

Faced with reports that States have done little to enhance their capacity to sterilise stray dogs, the Supreme Court on Wednesday (January 28, 2026) asked whether State governments were “building castles in the air”.

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N.V. Anjaria expressed dissatisfaction with the submissions made by various States about their animal birth control (ABC) facilities, infrastructure for sterilisation of stray dogs, and setting up of animal shelters. The court was unhappy about the lack of initiative on the part of States to comply with the Supreme Court’s directions, including the fencing of institutional areas and removal of stray dogs from roads and highways.

Lack of specifics

Amicus curiae and senior advocate Gaurav Agarwal submitted that Bihar had 34 ABC centres where, according to the State government, 20,648 dogs were sterilised. However, there was no specific data on the daily capacity of sterilisation or other details.

“The State should have done a complete audit of ABC centres. If there are more than six lakh dogs in the State, the sterilisation of 20,648 dogs was totally insufficient. Ninety-one dogs are presently lodged in the pounds. The affidavit does not indicate in how many institutional areas the survey has been done to see if there are fences, boundary walls, etc.,” Mr. Agarwal submitted.

“They are all building castles in the air. None of the States have given data on how many stray dog bites happened, except for Assam,” the Bench remarked.

‘Shocking’

The court was astonished by the frequency of dog-bite incidents in Assam. “In 2024, there were 1.66 lakh bites. In 2025, only in January, there were 20,900. This is shocking,” it observed.

The Bench warned of strict action against States which make vague assertions in their affidavits in order to cloak non-compliance. “We are going to pass strong strictures against States that make vague averments,” Justice Nath said.

The top court posted the matters for hearing on Thursday (January 29, 2026).