"Can Only Be Solved By...": RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat On Supreme Court's Stray Dogs Order

Noting that all animals have the right to live, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Thursday said the stray dog menace in Delhi can only be solved by regulating their population, and not by confining them to shelters.

Bhagwat, a veterinary science graduate, commented on the controversy surrounding a Supreme Court order that asked the Delhi-NCR authorities to relocate stray dogs from streets to shelters.

A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court had acted in the suo motu case initiated on July 28 over a media report on stray dog bites leading to rabies, particularly among children, in the national capital.

"The problem can be solved only by regulating the population of street dogs. But, it cannot be resolved by putting stray dogs in shelters," he said, while addressing a religious congregation at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Cuttack.

Citing an instance, Bhagwat said that while milking a cow, Indians take some milk and leave the rest for the calf.

"This is the art of striking a balance between man and nature. The nature should be conserved by maintaining a balance between development and environment," he said.

Bhagwat, who addressed two sessions of the congregation attended by over 500 saints from across the country, said various issues associated with nature could be solved through traditional methods.

"Indian soil is fertile because our farmers do not extract more from the earth. They use Mother Earth to produce grains required for consumption, unlike the Europeans who destroyed the soil in Africa by using excessive fertilisers for maximum grain production," he said.

After the Cuttack meeting, Bhagwat left for Puri, where he visited the Govardhan Peeth. He then met Shankaracharya Swami Nischalananda Saraswati and sought his blessings.

They reportedly also discussed key religious matters during the meeting.

Thereafter, Bhagwat visited the Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, who arrived in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday evening, spent the night at the Utkal Bipanna Sahayata Samiti office in the Mancheswar area of the city.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)