In stray dogs and Aravalli hill cases, the Supreme Court has gone against its formidable legacy

On July 28, the Supreme Court initiated a suo motu proceeding relying primarily on a newspaper report highlighting incidents involving stray dogs. What followed was a series of interim directions that, in substance and effect, bear the unmistakable trappings of final orders — issued without a comprehensive hearing of stakeholders, without engagement with domain experts, and without any demonstrable scientific or technical analysis of a complex urban environmental and public health issue.

This development is concerning for what it portends in the context of animal welfare and urban governance. But it also reveals a deeper and more troubling shift in the SC’s own institutional approach — one that appears increasingly at odds with the standards the Court itself painstakingly developed over decades.

To appreciate the gravity of this shift, it is necessary to briefly revisit the historical role of the Supreme Court in India’s constitutional and governance framework.

In post-Independence India, particularly after the Emergency era, the SC consciously reinvented itself as a champion of socio-economic justice, civil liberties, and environmental protection. Recognising the chronic inefficiencies, inertia, and at times complicity of the executive and legislature, the Court evolved innovative judicial tools — Public Interest Litigation (PIL), epistolary jurisdiction, suo motu cognisance, and the expansive use of its plenary and inherent powers. These were not exercises in judicial vanity, but institutional responses to governance failure.

Crucially, the Court’s foray into policy-adjacent domains was never unguided or whimsical. Whether in cases of bonded labour, environmental PILs, urban governance matters, or public health crises, the SC consistently emphasised scientific, rational, and evidence-based decision-making. It appointed independent expert committees, relied on neutral fact-finding bodies, and insisted that policy solutions — especially in technically complex matters — must be informed by domain expertise rather than political expediency or public emotion. In doing so, the Court did not merely adjudicate disputes; it fulfilled its role as the guardian and final interpreter of constitutional values.

This disciplined activism of the Court adopted doctrines such as absolute liability, precautionary principle, polluter-pays principle, sustainable development, and inter-generational equity. Environmental protection was understood not narrowly, but as a holistic constitutional commitment encompassing human health, ecological balance, and quality of life. Importantly, the Court repeatedly cautioned itself against succumbing to populist pressures, recognising that constitutional adjudication must often stand firm against majoritarian impulses and transient hysteria.

Against this jurisprudential legacy, recent trends suggest a worrying departure.

Recently, the Supreme Court, in review proceedings in Confederation of Real Estate Developers of India vs Vanashakti & Anr, arising from a challenge to government notifications permitting ex post facto environmental clearances for projects commenced without prior statutory approval, reconsidered and overturned its earlier decision quashing the said framework. The review judgment upholding these notifications marked a significant dilution of the precautionary principle — long regarded as the bedrock of Indian environmental jurisprudence. By privileging post-hoc penalties and compensatory mechanisms under the polluter-pays principle, the Court effectively legitimised environmental illegality first and remediation later. As cautioned in the dissenting opinion of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, this approach represents a clear jurisprudential regression, reducing environmental protection from a preventive mandate to merely a compensatory exercise.

The Aravalli hills case further exemplifies this drift. The Court initially accepted, almost wholesale, the definition and identification of the Aravalli range as provided by a government-appointed committee, without the benefit of an independent, court-appointed expert assessment. Sweeping directions followed, only for the Court to later recall and stay its own order upon acknowledging the absence of a reliable, neutral, and scientific factual foundation. The episode underscores an increasing judicial willingness to rely uncritically on executive-generated material, while simultaneously abandoning the Court’s own tradition of independent expert scrutiny.

This regression finds its most troubling expression in the ongoing stray dogs suo motu proceedings.

The issue of stray dogs squarely implicates the urban environment, which falls within the expansive definition of “environment” under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Dogs are part of urban ecosystems, and their management involves interlinked considerations of public health, animal welfare, behavioural science, municipal governance, and constitutional values. Yet, the Court initiated proceedings on the basis of media reports and anecdotal narratives, without first calling for comprehensive data or expert inputs.

More concerningly, the Court has proceeded to pass interim orders of a determinative nature without hearing key stakeholders — including animal caregivers, municipal implementers, animal behaviourists, veterinarians, epidemiologists, and public health experts. Bodies such as the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), as well as international organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO), have consistently recognised that the most effective and scientifically validated method for controlling rabies and stray dog populations is the Capture–Vaccinate–Sterilise–Release (CVSR) model, now codified in India through the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023.

These scientific frameworks have been developed precisely to avoid ad hoc, reactionary, and counterproductive responses. Empirical evidence shows that indiscriminate removal or relocation of dogs destabilises territorial balance, increases aggression, and worsens public health outcomes. Yet, the Court’s present approach appears to sidestep this accumulated scientific knowledge in favour of expedient, emotionally driven interventions.

The irony is stark. The very institution that once insisted on expert-driven governance solutions now appears willing to substitute scientific analysis with judicial intuition. Interim orders, passed without a full evidentiary foundation or inclusive hearing, risk entrenching irreversible consequences — precisely the outcome the Court historically sought to avoid.

The concern, therefore, is not judicial activism or restraint in isolation, but judicial arbitrariness masquerading as urgency. In attempting to respond swiftly to public anxiety, the SC risks abandoning the methodological discipline that underpinned its greatest contributions to Indian jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court earned its legitimacy not merely through its authority, but through its commitment to reason, evidence, and constitutional morality — even when such commitments ran counter to political will or popular sentiment. A retreat from those standards, as seen in the environmental clearance cases, the Aravalli matter, and now the stray dogs proceedings, threatens to erode that hard-earned institutional capital.

If the Supreme Court is to remain the sentinel on the qui vive, it must once again hold itself to the rigorous standards it once imposed upon the state— grounding its interventions in science, hearing all stakeholders, and resisting the pull of immediacy and emotion. Anything less would mark not evolution, but regression.

The writer is a practicing advocate in the Lucknow Bench, Allahabad High Court