What the ABC Programme Actually Mandates
The Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, first notified in 2001 and significantly revised in 2023, require every municipal body in India to sterilise and vaccinate free-roaming dogs, return them to their original location, and maintain ward-level records. The programme does not permit culling, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this, and it draws on the World Health Organisation's position that mass killing of street dogs does not sustainably reduce their population, because surviving dogs from adjoining areas simply move in to fill the vacuum. The biological mechanism behind this is well established: dogs are territorial, and a sterilised, vaccinated, resident dog actively keeps out new entrants. Remove the dog, and you remove the territory holder.
