When Animal Welfare Meets Institutional Panic: India's Supreme Court Creates Territorial Exclusion Zones for Community Dogs

Abstract

This short article examines the Indian Supreme Court’s November 2025 order establishing permanent territorial exclusion zones for sterilized and vaccinated community dogs in institutional spaces, while simultaneously affirming the Catch, Neuter, Vaccinate, and Release method as scientifically sound for general urban areas. Through comparative constitutional analysis of Germany's proportionality framework, Ecuador's rights of nature jurisprudence, and Argentina's individual animal rights doctrine, the article demonstrates how this two-tiered territorial system subordinates Article 51A(g)'s constitutional mandate of animal dignity to institutional expedience, while paradoxically reducing protection for children and patients from rabies through territorial replacement by unvaccinated populations. The analysis reveals three interconnected failures: constitutional incoherence in applying dignity protections based solely on geography, epidemiological counterproductivity through territorial replacement by unvaccinated populations, and structural impossibility given India's shelter capacity deficit. By tracing the trajectory from August's constitutional restoration to November's reversal, the article reveals the capacity of judicial populism to create precedents that simultaneously uphold and undermine constitutional principles, while imposing obligations that the state cannot fulfill.