CHENNAI: The keenness expressed by Municipal Administration Minister K N Nehru on Tuesday to implement the Supreme Court’s order to remove stray dogs from the streets appeared to be an indication of a quick fix after failing to effectively implement the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme for over two decades.
Activists point out that, despite spending tens of crores every year, the stray population remained much higher than official estimates.
To start with, there is no reliable state-wide data on the stray population. According to the nation-wide Livestock Census done in 2019, TN had 4.41 lakh stray dogs.
Of the 25 municipal corporations, only four have completed surveys in the last two years.
Tambaram recently undertook a survey, estimating around 45,000 dogs. The data from four corporations (Chennai, Coimbatore, Erode and Vellore) show that they together have roughly 3.3 lakh dogs, which is nearly 75% of the state-wide population in 2019, indicating the rapid growth the state seems to have witnessed, particularly during and post-Covid.
As per this data, Chennai has 1.8 lakh strays, but the actual numbers could be 2.2-2.3 lakh, sources said. Of the strays in these four corporations, only a meagre 19.8% have undergone ABC procedure. Local bodies should ideally target sterilising 70%-80% of the dogs in a ward in a city over a period of 5-10 years.
A meagre 20% coverage would leave the remaining to reproduce at an average of 4-6 pups per litter.
Shravan Krishnan, director of Besant Memorial Animal Dispensary, said instead of trying to implement the unviable suggestion of the SC, local body officials who failed to properly implement ABC should be pulled up.
The worsening of the problem is evident from the rise in dog-bite cases as well. According to Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme data, cases rose from 3.6 lakh in 2022 to 4.8 lakh in 2024 in TN.
Inadequate number of ABC centres is also a concern. To cater to Chennai’s 1.8 lakh, there are only five centres that can perform 10,000 surgeries each a year. However, GCC has been performing only 15,000 ABC procedures per year.GCC’s data says 27% of its stray dogs are sterilised which would mean 1.31 lakh dogs are yet to be covered.
At this rate, the civic body would need eight years to cover the existing population alone, although the population would have already gone up exponentially.
“Experts recommend having at least 17 centres and stepping up the number of surgeries to cover more dogs every year to curb their population,” said a corporation source.
In May, at a meeting chaired by CM MK Stalin on controlling the stray dog population, a state-level monitoring panel was formed headed by the Municipal Administration secretary, along with monitoring bodies local bodies, after instructions from Animal Welfare Board of India in April.
It also announced increasing number of ABC centres, training dog catchers and veterinarians and upgrading infrastructure of veterinary hospitals.