With the latest Supreme Court judgment on the issue of stray dogs, the ambit of which now extends from Delhi to the entire country, some guidelines have been provided to deal with this widespread menace. The implications are well known—from terrible fear to a fatal end in case the dog is infected with rabies.
Unfortunately, in India it takes years, and sometimes even decades, to develop and implement any new mechanism to deal with such a problem, especially on a gigantic scale. Till such a solution is in place, citizens have to bear the brunt of this fearful uncertainty.
Take the instance of any district of the Union Territory: the stray dog menace has eventually turned the streets of J&K into danger zones for the inhabitants, especially children and the elderly. Residents and visitors are living in constant fear of becoming victims of animal bites, particularly during late hours of the night.
The latest case which has garnered the attention of the people has been reported from District Poonch’s Surankote town, where at least 12 people have been injured when a stray dog attacked them around the market area. This is just the case of a single day but one can guess the situation across the UT where there are hordes of these stray dogs reining their regions especially during the night time.
The reports coming from Surankote have stated that the police and Surankote Municipal Authority have taken cognizance of the matter but the problem being gigantic needs to be tackled at the UT level with some out of the box initiatives as there are many cases of stray dog bites which obviously go unregistered because people seem to have lost hope that authorities will take any action to curb this archaic problem.
The concerned civic bodies both in the Jammu Division and its counterparts in the Valley have totally failed in curbing the threat being posed by the ever increasing population of these unpredictable creatures roaming freely on the streets of the Union Territory.
On one side the government has been raising awareness over prevention of Rabies but on the other, it has failed to check the population of stray dogs, which is growing with each passing day, giving a tough time to people who have to venture out during night hours for their professional obligations or some other work. Castration of these dogs was a novel idea to restrict their population but was not implemented with heart and spirit, proving it as another futile exercise in getting rid of these oldest companions of man on earth.
According to a report published in August this year, J&K ranks second in India with a ratio of 23 stray dogs per 1,000 people, making it clear that the government must take stern steps to control the population of stray dogs, or else things may go out of hand. Thus, the Union Territory government should act fast and take measures consistent with the Apex Court guidelines, without any further human cost.
