A recent Supreme Court mandate has set a collision course between public safety and economic reality by ordering permanent removal of community dogs from public places. Issued on November 7, 2025, the directive specifically targets educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, and transport hubs. Unlike previous protocols that allowed for the release of animals after sterilisation, the court has now made the mandate absolute: local bodies must capture and sterilise these dogs, but they are strictly forbidden from releasing them back into the streets. Instead, they must be housed in permanent shelters indefinitely.
The scale of this undertaking is staggering, and the math simply doesn't add up on any state balance sheet. According to the 2024-25 Economic Survey Report, India has roughly 15.5 lakh educational institutions. Even using a conservative estimate of 10 dogs per school, that accounts for 1.55 crore animals. When you factor in hospitals and transit hubs, the number easily crosses 2 crore. To house this population at a standard capacity of 200 dogs per facility, the country would need to build over 1 lakh new shelters— essentially overnight.
The logistical nightmare becomes even clearer when compared to India’s existing infrastructure. For context, the country currently grapples with the fact that 1.19 lakh schools still lack electricity and over 61,000 have no functional toilets. There are only about 32,000 primary health centers and roughly 700 district hospitals nationwide. To demand a construction spree for animal shelters that exceeds the number of existing healthcare facilities seems profoundly out of touch with the country's budgetary constraints.
Furthermore, the financial burden of maintenance is astronomical. The projected annual feeding cost alone is estimated at ₹29,000 crore. To put the construction challenge in perspective, it took an entire decade of focused funding and policy to build 93.61 lakh homes for the urban poor under the PM Awas Yojana. The court is now effectively asking for a housing project for 1.55 crore dogs to be executed "forthwith." As the next hearing approaches on January 7, many are hoping the bench will reconsider a confinement diktat that currently lacks any viable economic blueprint.
Also read: Landmark judgements by Supreme Court in 2025
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