On Thursday, the Supreme Court announced that it will address petitions related to orders issued by municipal bodies concerning stray dogs, with a focus on Kerala and Mumbai, on October 18.

The division bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice KV Vishwanathan told the counsel present in the case that it did not want to pass any interim order in the matter. A decision in this matter will be taken after studying the relevant laws, rules, their implementation and the issues raised before it.

The bench directed that arguments on all the petitions should be concluded, with nodal lawyers from both sides responsible for compiling the judgments and submitting a slot-wise list of arguing lawyers. A lawyer pointed out the varying perspectives on this issue in different high courts.

Further, the bench said that all formalities, including completion of service on some parties, should be completed within three weeks. After this, the hearing of the case was fixed on October 18.

While hearing the case in October last year, the apex court had asked the Animal Welfare Board of India to submit an affidavit with data on incidents of dog bites in the last seven years in various states and major cities.

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