Raveena Tandon Slams Supreme Court’s Stray Dog Relocation Order, Calls for Humane Solutions.
Raveena Tandon condemned the Supreme Court’s stray dog relocation order, urging humane, well-planned vaccination and sterilisation drives. She criticised civic negligence, infrastructure lapses, and selective accountability, calling for compassion over mass removal.
New Delhi: Actor and animal welfare crusader Raveena Tandon has vehemently opposed the Supreme Court’s recent directive to shift all stray dogs in Delhi-NCR to shelters.
Labeling the order as “impossible to implement” and “a knee-jerk reaction”, she told NDTV that the verdict poses grave risks to both vaccinated and unvaccinated canines, as well as healthy and ailing ones, if they are housed together without proper segregation.
“This is like extermination. This is ridiculous. For the most loving beings on this planet, human beings have gone mad in their selfish greed to own everything. Instead of addressing the root cause, they're targeting the animals,” she said, expressing anguish over the potential repercussions.
Tandon emphasised that the real lapse lies in the negligence of municipal bodies and the ineffective execution of sterilisation and vaccination programmes initiated years ago. According to her meticulous planning and consistent action could have prevented this situation altogether.
“If these had been implemented in a proper and organised manner, we wouldn’t have reached this point. Many countries have tried such mass relocation before, and it has failed. This won’t work either,” she asserted with conviction.
Drawing a stark juxtaposition with public infrastructure failures, she remarked, “Look at the statistics. Contractors responsible for collapsed bridges, emerging potholes, and cracked roads have caused countless deaths. In 2022, there were about 25 dog bites, yet over 25,000 deaths occurred due to road mishaps caused by poor maintenance. Why aren’t those contractors being arrested? Why this selective outrage?”
She further challenged, “Why are those who failed to implement sterilisation and vaccination drives not held accountable? Why punish animals instead?”
Raveena urged the government to focus on concerted and perpetual sterilization and vaccination campaigns instead of uprooting all dogs from the streets. She recommended that only sick dogs be removed and that every civic authority be made culpable for lapses in the schemes already in place.
Calling for the verdict to be rescinded, she underscored that the true solution lies in accountability, strategic planning, and compassionate intervention rather than indiscriminate relocation.
