New Delhi, May 19: Animal rights activist and former Union Minister Maneka Gandhi on Tuesday raised concerns over the proliferation of illegal NGOs handling stray dogs in India. She urged the government to provide proper training to recognised organisations and to award only one contract per NGO.
Her remarks came after the Supreme Court refused to recall its earlier directives on the management of stray dogs in public areas, while issuing additional guidelines to enforce the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme more strictly nationwide.
Describing the apex court’s directions as “undoable,” Gandhi remarked, “The Supreme Court has accepted defeat.”
Speaking to IANS, she highlighted that ABC centres in Delhi have been shut down, and no new centres have been established. Gandhi also pointed out that most NGOs operating in this space are illegal.
“There are only 16 NGOs in the country that are trained and honest. Some companies run multiple NGOs, divide the funds among them, and merely pretend to carry out sterilisation. This practice is occurring in over 150 districts,” she alleged.
According to Gandhi, around 95% of the current ABC centres are fake. “They don’t perform sterilisation on stray dogs and pocket half the money, giving the rest to certain municipal officials. At least Rs 500–600 crore has been misused this way,” she said.
She cited a case from Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, where an ABC centre, raided just two weeks after opening, was found not to have sterilised a single dog. Instead, it had bought testicles and ovaries from deceased stray dogs in Bhopal and Indore, using these as a cover to earn around Rs 10 lakh per week.
Gandhi also criticised government spending priorities, noting, “The government spends around Rs 700 crore each week to eradicate polio, but how much has it spent on the stray dog issue? Nothing. Imagine if the same funds were allocated to ABC programmes—there would be a noticeable difference.”
She called for urgent and transparent government action, suggesting that states open 780 ABC centres, provide proper training for NGOs, and implement a rule limiting NGOs to a single contract.
Gandhi alleged instances of contract misuse across the country: an NGO in Chennai reportedly held 11 contracts, another in Maharashtra’s Vasai-Virar had five, and in Haryana, eight to nine illegal contracts were recorded. “This has essentially created a mafia,” she said, urging the removal of fake NGOs.
The Supreme Court also referenced reports of 1,084 dog bite incidents in a single month in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan. Gandhi questioned the absence of ABC centres in the area, noting that Rajasthan has only one trained NGO, ‘Help and Suffering,’ based in Jaipur.
She suggested that stricter accountability measures, such as punishing municipal commissioners for failing to open ABC centres, could ensure proper implementation of the programme.
