NHAI tells SC it cannot herd stray animals off highways

1. At a Glance

• National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) told Chief Justice of India Surya Kant it cannot physically herd stray cattle/animals off highways or build shelter homes for them — this responsibility, it argued, belongs to local/district authorities [1].
• Tests the federal division of civic responsibility (Centre vs. local bodies) in implementing Supreme Court welfare/safety directions.
• Compliance with the original SC direction would cost NHAI an estimated ₹7,000 crore [1].
• Relevant for GS-II (judiciary–executive interface, federalism) and GS-III (road safety/infrastructure).

2. Why in the News

• On Monday, 21 September 2026, Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, appearing for NHAI, orally mentioned before CJI Surya Kant that NHAI cannot herd stray cattle/animals off public roads or arrange shelter homes for them [1].
• Mehta sought constitution of a Bench to hear NHAI's request to modify the Supreme Court's direction issued in November 2025 (originally passed by a Bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath, later including Justices Sandeep Mehta and N.V. Anjaria) mandating cattle-shelter and highway-clearing measures [1][2].

3. Background & Evolution

• The underlying matter originated from a suo motu case on stray dog management before the Supreme Court, which expanded to cover stray cattle on highways [2].
• The Bench (Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, N.V. Anjaria) directed all States/UTs to fence major public spaces (schools, colleges, hospitals, bus stands, railway stations) and clear highways of stray animals within eight weeks [2].
• NHAI and Public Works Department (PWD) officials were directed to form patrolling teams, issue a helpline number, and install boards at key points for motorists to report stray cattle sightings/accidents [2].
• Municipal bodies were tasked with pick-up drives, sterilisation and vaccination under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023, before shifting animals to shelters [2].
• Chief Secretaries of all States/UTs were made responsible for compliance, with personal accountability for defaulting officers, and compliance reports due within eight weeks [2].
• NHAI subsequently moved the SC seeking a special Bench to challenge/modify the shelter-construction direction, citing the ₹7,000 crore cost burden [1].

4. Core Static Facts

Item	Detail
Petitioner/Applicant	NHAI (via Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta) [1]
Forum	Supreme Court of India, mentioned before CJI Surya Kant [1]
Original directing Bench	Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, N.V. Anjaria [2]
Underlying case type	Suo motu — stray dog/animal management [2]
Estimated compliance cost	₹7,000 crore [1]
Timeline in original order	8 weeks for States/UTs to comply [2]
Key rules invoked	Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023 [2]
Agencies tasked	NHAI, PWD, municipal bodies, State Chief Secretaries [2]
NHAI's parent ministry	Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH)

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Legal/Constitutional

• Raises questions on judicial overreach vs. executive competence — can courts assign specific operational tasks (shelter construction) to a road-infrastructure body like NHAI? [1]
• Tests scope of Article 142 (complete justice) powers typically invoked in such SC directions.

Administrative

• Highlights jurisdictional overlap between NHAI (highway infrastructure), municipal bodies (animal control under ABC Rules), and state governments (public safety) [1][2].
• NHAI's core mandate is highway construction/maintenance, not animal welfare — raises capacity and mandate-mismatch concerns.

Economic

• ₹7,000 crore cost estimate is significant relative to NHAI's capital expenditure priorities, potentially diverting funds from road-building/safety projects [1].

Social

• Directly tied to road accident/safety concerns caused by stray cattle on highways — a recurring rural-road-safety issue.

Governance

• Compliance mechanism with personal accountability for officers reflects SC's push for enforceable accountability, unusual in typical policy directions [2].

6. Recent Developments (last 12-18 months)

• November 2025: Supreme Court Bench (Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, N.V. Anjaria) directs fencing of public spaces and clearing highways of stray animals within eight weeks; tasks NHAI/PWD with patrolling and helplines [2].
• 21 September 2026: NHAI, through SG Tushar Mehta, orally mentions before CJI Surya Kant that it cannot herd stray animals or build shelters, seeking a special Bench to modify the November 2025 direction [1].

7. Prelims Hooks

• NHAI's plea was mentioned before CJI Surya Kant on 21 September 2026 [1].
• Solicitor-General appearing for NHAI: Tushar Mehta [1].
• Estimated cost of compliance with SC's cattle-shelter direction: ₹7,000 crore [1].
• Original direction issued by a Bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath (with Justices Sandeep Mehta, N.V. Anjaria) [2].
• Underlying matter is a suo motu case on stray dog management that expanded to cattle on highways [2].
• SC directed States/UTs to clear highways of strays and fence public spaces within eight weeks [2].
• Bodies to be fenced per SC order: schools, colleges, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands, railway stations [2].
• Sterilisation/vaccination of strays is governed by the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023 [2].
• NHAI functions under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
• NHAI and PWD were directed to set up patrolling teams and helpline numbers for stray cattle on highways [2].
• SC order fixed personal accountability of Chief Secretaries/officers for non-compliance [2].

8. A Road Builder Cannot Legally Seize Someone's Cow

• The power to pick up an animal sits with local bodies, not with NHAI
• Stray cattle are almost always someone's property that has been let loose. Taking an animal away needs a legal power to impound it.
• That power sits in cattle pounds (kanji houses) and gaushalas, which States may empower panchayats and local bodies to set up and run [6].
• Sterilisation and vaccination under the ABC Rules, 2023 are also placed on municipalities, corporations and panchayats — not on any central road agency [6].

• So even if NHAI hired men to chase cattle off the road, it would have nowhere lawful to put them.

• NHAI's own answer to the problem has been engineering, not herding

• NHAI has run a pilot project to stop stray-cattle accidents on national highways — that is, road-side measures on its own land [3].

• That is the shape of what a highway agency can actually do: fence, light, detect, warn. It cannot run an animal-catching service across 28 States.

• The narrow legal point to use in an answer

• NHAI is not saying "the problem is not serious". It is saying the duty was placed on the wrong office [1].
• This is a fight about who is the right agency, not about whether the order is desirable.

9. The Order Clears the Road but Not the Reason Cattle Are on It

• India has over 5 million stray cattle, and shelters have not reduced the number [5]
• Between 2012 and 2019, seven of the ten States with the most stray cattle saw their numbers go up — even while the Centre kept expanding gaushalas under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission [5].

• So building more shelters, which is exactly what the ₹7,000 crore direction demands [1], is the one method that has already been tried at scale and has not worked.

• Cattle are on the road because keeping them stopped paying

• Male calves and low-milk cows earn the farmer nothing, so they are let loose [5].
• About 21% of India's cattle are crossbreds from old government schemes that pushed foreign breeds like Jersey and Holstein Friesian. These animals do not suit Indian conditions and live through fewer lactations — 3.4 against 9–10 for Indian breeds — so a small farmer cannot afford to keep them [5].

• Another 49% are "non-descript" cattle whose real productivity has never been properly researched [5].

• What this means for the exam answer

• A shelter is a place to store the outcome. The cause sits in breeding policy and farm economics [5].
• Fixing the highway without fixing abandonment means the same cattle come back every year.

10. Why the Court Still Had Good Reason to Push NHAI Hard

• The strongest argument against NHAI: people are dying, and the road belongs to NHAI
• In Haryana alone, stray cattle caused 3,383 road accidents in five years, killing 919 people and injuring 3,017 [4].
• National highways are only about 2% of India's road network, but carry 33% of all road accidents and 36.2% of deaths [7].

• NHAI collects toll on these roads and controls the land along them. A user paying toll can fairly ask who is answerable for a cow on that carriageway.

• The Court had already tried the "correct" route and it did not deliver

• The November 2025 order did not start with NHAI. It put the main duty on States, municipalities and Chief Secretaries, with personal accountability for defaulting officers [2].

• When every office in a chain is responsible, in practice no one is. NHAI was added as the one body that actually owns the asset.

• Where the objection is still right, honestly

• Ordering NHAI to build shelters goes past its competence. Ordering it to fence, light and patrol its own land does not.
• The sensible outcome is not to cancel the direction but to split it: engineering duties to NHAI, animal custody duties to local bodies under the ABC Rules, 2023 [6].

11. Nobody Has a Budget Line for Stray Cattle

• The Centre has no dedicated fund for stray cattle at all
• No dedicated central funds are allocated for stray cattle welfare; help comes only as Animal Welfare Board of India assistance to animal welfare organisations, including gaushalas that keep male cattle [6].

• So the ₹7,000 crore the Court's order would cost [1] has no existing scheme to come out of. It would have to be taken from road building.

• The money that does exist is for dogs, and it is small

• Under the ABC Rules, 2023, local bodies and SPCAs get up to ₹800 per dog and ₹600 per cat for sterilisation and immunisation [6].

• There is no similar per-animal payment for cattle, which are far larger, costlier to catch, transport and feed for life.

• This is why the duty keeps sliding upward

• Municipal bodies got civic functions after the 74th Constitutional Amendment, but not matching money.
• An unfunded local duty becomes a court case, and the court then points at the only body with a large budget — here, NHAI. That is the real federalism lesson in this news item [1].

12. Fixes That Match Where the System Actually Breaks

• MoRTH and NHAI: scale up the stray-cattle pilot instead of building shelters
• NHAI has already tested a project on national highways to prevent stray-cattle accidents [3].

• Fencing, cattle-proof underpasses at village crossings, reflective collars and the helpline the Court itself ordered [2] are all inside NHAI's competence and cost far less than ₹7,000 crore of shelters [1].

• Department of Animal Husbandry: stop male calves from being born unwanted

• Dr D K Sadana argues India should halt the crossbreeding push and use sexed semen technology for indigenous breeds [5].
• Sexed semen means mostly female calves are born. Fewer unwanted male calves means fewer animals let loose on the road later.

• This is the only measure that reduces the inflow of strays instead of storing them.

• States: actually use the cattle pound power they already have

• States may empower panchayats to set up and run cattle pounds (kanji houses) and gaushala shelters as community assets [6].

• The power exists on paper. Where it is used, an animal picked off a highway has a lawful destination — which is exactly what NHAI says is missing today [1].

• Fifteenth Finance Commission-style tied grants, not court orders, should carry the money

• Local bodies were given the duty but not the funds [6].
• A per-animal grant for cattle, on the model of the ₹800-per-dog ABC payment [6], would put the money where the legal power already sits.

13. Anchors for Answers

• Data: Over 5 million stray cattle in India (20th Livestock Census); numbers rose in 7 of the 10 worst-affected States between 2012 and 2019 despite gaushala expansion [5]
• Data: Haryana — 3,383 stray-cattle accidents in five years, 919 deaths, 3,017 injured [4]
• Data: National highways are ~2% of the road network but see 33% of accidents and 36.2% of road deaths [7]
• Data: ₹7,000 crore — NHAI's estimated cost of complying with the Supreme Court's cattle-shelter direction [1]
• Data: ABC support is ₹800 per dog and ₹600 per cat; no dedicated central fund exists for stray cattle [6]
• Law/Case: Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 (duty on municipalities and panchayats); Article 142; 74th Constitutional Amendment (civic duties devolved without funds)
• Scheme: Rashtriya Gokul Mission — expanded gaushala support, yet stray numbers still rose [5]; NHAI's pilot project to prevent stray-cattle accidents on national highways [3]
• Expert view: Dr D K Sadana — stop crossbreeding, use sexed semen and revive draft-animal use, instead of relying on gaushalas [5]

14. Mains Relevance

• GS-II: Judiciary, separation of powers, judicial activism vs. executive/administrative competence; federalism (Centre–State–local body responsibility division).
• GS-III: Infrastructure (highways), road safety, economy of infrastructure financing.
• Possible question stems: 1. Discuss the constitutional and administrative issues arising when the Supreme Court directs a specialized infrastructure body like NHAI to perform welfare functions beyond its core mandate. 2. Examine the overlapping jurisdiction of central, state and local bodies in managing stray animal menace in India, with reference to recent Supreme Court directions. 3. 'Judicial directions on stray animal management expose gaps in India's civic governance architecture.' Comment.

15. Related Topics to Study Next

• Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023 — legal framework for stray dog/animal management referenced in the SC order [2].
• National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) — structure, mandate, funding model.
• Article 142 of the Constitution — SC's power to pass orders for "complete justice," often invoked in such suo motu matters.
• 73rd/74th Constitutional Amendments — devolution of civic functions (animal control) to municipal/panchayati bodies.
• Road accidents due to stray animals — road safety data (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways reports).
• Judicial overreach vs. judicial activism — broader debate on PIL-driven governance directions.
• Centre-State fiscal relations — cost-sharing disputes in implementing court-mandated welfare schemes.

16. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Do not confuse this case with the separate SC stray dog relocation order for Delhi-NCR — this is a distinct but related suo motu matter now covering cattle on highways too [2].
• NHAI operates under MoRTH, not the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (a common misattribution given the animal-welfare angle).
• Animal sterilisation/vaccination obligations arise from ABC Rules, 2023, not the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act directly.
• Note the case is at the "seeking modification of a direction" stage — NHAI has not been granted relief yet; it is only requesting a special Bench.
• Distinguish the originating Bench (Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, N.V. Anjaria, November 2025) from the CJI Surya Kant mentioning bench (September 2026) — the latter is procedural, not a final ruling.