Mumbai: BMC proposes to sterilise 98,000 dogs in three years

A man feeds dogs at Carter Road. File pic

With an aim to sterilise more than 98,000 dogs over the next three years at a cost of R13.40 crore, the veterinary health department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has placed a proposal before the standing committee. An earlier proposal of catching and releasing 35,000 dogs in two years at a cost of Rs 2.37
crore has already been sanctioned.

The corporation expects to conduct sterilisation of 32,700 dogs per year, out of which 21,300 will be caught and released by the civic body itself. "The earlier proposal was only related to the transportation of dogs. The BMC had approved to pay Rs 680 per dog for catching and releasing them in the vicinity. But this proposal is for conducting sterilisation," said Dr. Yogesh Shetye, general manager of Deonar abattoir and in-charge of the project.

The BMC has been conducting sterilisation programmes for animals since 1994. As per previous census of dogs, there were 95,174 of them in 2014 and 25,935 were not sterilised, of which 14,674 were male and 11,261 female. According to an estimate, there are about 2 lakh to 2.25 lakh dogs in the city and of these, 1.40 lakh are not sterilised.

The civic body sterilised over 90,000 dogs from 2014 to 2019.

As per the proposal, the BMC has set four categories for the sterilisation programme. The NGOs that get electricity and water free of cost from the BMC and are unable to catch and release dogs by themselves, will get Rs 1,000 for sterilisation of each. Those NGOs that pay for electricity and water and can catch and release the dogs will get R1,600 per dog and the NGOs who either get free electricity and water and can do the job of catching dogs will get Rs 1,300.

680
Amount sanctioned per dog already

90k
No. of dogs sterilised from 2014-19

Dog bite incidents

Year Cases
2015 80,934
2016 82,564
2017 72,470
2018 85,546
2019 84,789
2020
(till Sept) 41,337

Dogs caught over the years

Year BMC Private Total
2014 3,587 3,649 7,236
2015 1,877 4,537 6,414
2016 5,231 6,734 11,965
2017 4,169 20,121 24,290
2018 2,978 18,908 21,886
2019 3,502 15,410 18,912
Total 21,344 69,359 90,703