AHMEDABAD, India – Despite a much-publicized agreement by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) with the Animal Welfare Board of India to turn over a new leaf in managing the city's dog population, it has continued to inflict massive cruelty and illegally dump dogs at the Pirana landfill.

Recently, the AMC announced it had signed an MOU agreeing to implement a large-scale street-dog sterilization and immunization initiative. This suggested the AMC would abide by national animal-welfare laws. Then it should have stopped using deadly iron tongs to catch dogs and then dump them on the city's outskirts, both illegal deeds, yet hitherto done daily through the AMC’s “Cattle Nuisance Control Department".

Although the AMC dog-catchers claim to have stopped using tongs to catch dogs (these kill up to half the animals by causing internal bleeding and rupturing organs), and although they were seen using nets instead, recent incidents refute any new commitment to more humane methods.

A few days ago, AMC dog-catchers went to a Bopal housing society to pick up three dogs that allegedly caused a nuisance. Some residents say the dogs were not a nuisance, but simply became targets for dog-hating individuals. Armed with sticks, some civilians chased the dogs and beat them to force them toward the dog-catchers who apprehended them with nets. The AMC dog catchers then allowed residents to continue beating the dogs even after they were caught and lying helplessly in the nets. Does this display progress?

Then the dog-catchers drove to the sewage farm at Pirana and released the animals there. This defies the agreement to abide by India's animal-birth-control rules. All dogs caught by the municipality should be taken for sterilization and anti-rabies vaccinations and then returned to their original locations.

Last month, the AMC ordered closure of the only Ahmedabad NGO that sterilized street dogs. So the caught dogs definitely don't go for sterilization and vaccination. No NGO now sterilizes dogs in Ahmedabad.

People living near the Pirana waste site and staff at the sewage farm attest that the AMC still dumps dogs there daily. This is counter-productive. When vaccinated against rabies, territorial street dogs can help to protect people by chasing off unvaccinated dogs. After sterilization, the dog population gradually would decrease on its own since the average life expectancy of a dog in urban India amounts to less than four years.

Worse, many dogs caught and illegally dumped at Pirana already were sterilized and vaccinated, as shown by their ear notches. By dumping sterilized, vaccinated dogs, the AMC sabotages a federally mandated program.

All this calls into question Ahmedabad's commitment to address the dog menace in good faith. It confirms the AMC as a law-breaking, rogue administration.

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