More than 50,000 people across India, including nearly 10,000 from Delhi, took part in a large handwritten letter-petition campaign on Saturday. They wrote to the Chief Justice of India asking the Supreme Court to rethink its November 7 order about community and stray dogs. People from all walks of life, students, homemakers, working professionals, and animal-care volunteers, chose handwritten letters to show how serious and emotional this issue is for them.
Why citizens are opposing the court’s order
The campaign was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s November 7, 2025 directive issued in a suo motu case on dog-bite incidents. The court had asked all states and union territories to immediately remove stray dogs from “sensitive areas” such as schools, colleges, hospitals, sports complexes, bus depots, and railway stations. The order said these dogs should be shifted to shelters after sterilisation and vaccination under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023. However, it also instructed that the dogs must not be released back to the same location, which goes against the ABC rules’ main “Capture–Sterilise–Vaccinate–Release” (CSVR) process.
Activists fear the order could harm stray dogs
Animal welfare groups leading the protest said the order is unscientific, impractical, and could turn into a “death sentence” for many dogs. They pointed out that India does not have enough proper, humane shelters to take in millions of stray animals. Moving vaccinated and sterilised local dogs away from their familiar areas, they say, will cause suffering and also create empty spaces. These empty areas could quickly be taken over by new, unsterilised dogs, possibly increasing aggression and worsening the very problem the order was trying to fix.
Public response shows deep concern for community dogs
The overwhelming participation, with people sharing postal receipts from places as far apart as Kashmir and Kanyakumari , shows how strongly many citizens feel about protecting community dogs. The letters request the Supreme Court to pause, recall, and review the November 7 order.
People are asking the court to focus instead on properly implementing the existing ABC rules: widespread sterilisation and vaccination, creating fixed feeding points, and managing dogs humanely rather than moving them away in large numbers.
