Animal Rights Group ‘Lovanimals’ Offers to Help Jamia Control its Dog Population

An animal rights group called, “Lovanimals (Trust For The Welfare Of Animals)” has offered to help Jamia Millia Islamia control its stray dogs population on-campus by offering to neuter and vaccinate them at no cost to the university.

In a letter addressed to the university Registrar, a founding member of Lovanimal, Sheetal Panwar, writes:

“I’m writing this in connection with the growing number of stray dogs within the JMI Campus & require permission from your office to get the dogs within the campus spayed/neutered & vaccinated as per government norms. I’d like to inform you that the sterilization and vaccination will be administered free of cost. In view of the above it is humbly prayed that the permission be granted for the same as soon as possible to ensure the well being of everyone within the campus.”

Lovanimal has offered to help Jamia control its stray dogs population because according to Aga Syed Salman Hamdani, another founding member of Lovanimals:

“The only humane, legal and scientific way of dealing with street dogs is to get them vaccinated and sterilized under Animal Birth Control Programme (ABC). Under this program, stray dogs are picked up, neutered, vaccinated against rabies and released in the respective areas from where they had been captured, which is in accordance with the Animal Birth Control Rules 2001 framed, under Section 38 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 and as per the orders of Honourable Supreme Court of India.”

Interestingly, it was due to the efforts of Lovanimals, that Jamia had issued a circular instructing heads of centers and departments at Jamia to place a notice on department noticeboards asking people to be kind to dogs.

According to Hamdani, Lovanimals had approached the university in response to a complaint they had received from some Jamia students, who told them that they were being prevented by a university official from feeding the dogs on-campus.

As a consequence, Lovanimals approached the Jamia administration on behalf of the students and requested the university to issue a notice informing all university officials not to prevent anyone from feeding the dogs, because such an act is cruel to animals, which is a punishable offense under the Indian penal code.

In a conversation with Jamia Journal, Panwar said that Lovanimal appreciates Jamia issuing the notice instructing people to be kind to dogs, and now they are eagerly waiting for a response from the university granting them permission to begin work of neutering and vaccinating the dogs on-campus.

[Also read: [EDITORIAL] Be Kind to Dogs, and Students]