Pets in Kolkata, 2026: a city that has never counted its street dogs, a state table of 76,486 bites, a corporation that reports no rabies death since 2013 and a pound for 300 dogs that is to become one for 4,000, a Rs 100 licence behind a login, 41 listed clinics with 12 open all night, and no municipal pet crematorium

Pets in Kolkata: the city's numbers on one page, and the rows that are empty

Kolkata's corporation counts less and publishes less than any other in this series. Fourteen rows, four of them a statement that the figure does not exist.

Two rows carry the weight. Kolkata has never counted its street dogs, so every claim about them, including the corporation's that bites are lower here than elsewhere, has no denominator; and the state's bite count more than tripled in two years in the national table. The rest of this report is about a city whose private veterinary layer is better documented, by Bonbeno's own directory, than its public one.

How many street dogs Kolkata has: nobody has counted, and the two official figures are 1.5 lakh and 8,000

Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune have counted. Delhi and Hyderabad at least estimate. Kolkata's corporation has given two figures six years apart that differ by a factor of nineteen.

In October 2017, launching a sterilisation drive, the corporation said 'there are over 1.5 lakh stray dogs in the city'; in January 2023, flagging off five veterinary ambulances, its health department said 'there are about 8000 stray dogs in Kolkata' and that about 23,000 had been vaccinated against rabies. No census, survey or method has been published for either, and the second figure is smaller than the number of dogs the corporation says it had vaccinated. The state's census says what the city's does not: West Bengal reported 11,40,165 stray dogs to the 2019 Livestock Census, 1.5 percent fewer than in 2012 and 11.8 for every 1,000 people, a higher density than Maharashtra's 10.4 or Tamil Nadu's 5.8.

What the state's density would imply, and why this report does not use it

Bonbeno's street dog report carries the census for every state and the municipal surveys that exist; Kolkata has no row in the second table because there is nothing to put in it. A city of Kolkata's size on West Bengal's density would hold about 50,000 to 55,000 dogs, which is neither of the corporation's figures, and this report does not use that arithmetic for anything but to show how far apart the two statements are.

Dog bites and rabies: a state table that tripled in two years, a city that publishes no count, and a corporation that says no one has died since 2013

Kolkata's bite figures exist only at the state level and only in the national surveillance table. The corporation's claim about rabies is twelve years old and has not been withdrawn.

The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives West Bengal 22,627 dog bites in 2022, 48,664 in 2023, 76,486 in 2024 and 10,264 in January 2025, with no suspected human rabies death in 2022 or 2023 and one in 2024. The 2024 rate, 76.8 per lakh, is the lowest of the eight cities' states by a wide margin, against Tamil Nadu's 623, Gujarat's 543, Maharashtra's 381 and Telangana's 319, and Bonbeno's dog bite report explains why a low IDSP figure is as likely to measure reporting as biting. For the city itself there is no number: the corporation's health head said in November 2025 that Kolkata's dog-bite incidents are lower than in most other Indian cities and that 'there are 18 vaccination centres where free vaccine is provided if someone gets bitten by a dog', and in 2017 that 'since January 2013, not a single person died of rabies in the city'.

The Animal Birth Control programme: a pound for 300 dogs, a plan for 4,000, five vacant veterinary posts, and a corporation dissolved mid-plan

Kolkata's sterilisation programme runs from one pound at Dhapa and a shortage of vets. The Supreme Court's order produced an announcement; the city's politics then removed the council that made it.

The corporation 'has an existing dog pound at Dhapa', where sterilisation is done, and has for years looked for land to move it because residential complexes have grown up around it. The 2017-18 drive it announced from there set 'a target of conducting sterilisation and treatment of 25 dogs per day' at two camps in each of the 144 wards until April 2018, with a trauma centre at Entally that could treat over 35 dogs at a time; in January 2023 it identified a plot behind the Hindu burial ground at Topsia for a new pound and sterilisation centre and added five ambulances to its four, each carrying six puppies, for about Rs 44 lakh. No annual count of dogs sterilised has been published since.

After the Supreme Court: camps in every ward, a 4,000-dog pound, and then no council

On 7 November 2025 the Supreme Court ordered every school, hospital, sports complex, bus stand and railway station cleared of street dogs and the dogs moved to shelters after sterilisation and vaccination, with Chief Secretaries personally responsible and compliance reports in eight weeks. Four days later the corporation's health head Atin Ghosh said it would 'set up an eco-friendly dog pound in the empty wetland beside Dhapa where over 4,000 dogs can be kept', hold rabies vaccination camps in every ward using vets hired case by case because 'presently there are 5 such vacancies' in its veterinary posts, and seek state approval to recruit on contract. The announcement drew Kolkata into the nationwide protests of 4 January 2026, where the planned shelter was described against the existing pound's 'present capacity of about 300'. Then the council went: on 5 June 2026 mayor Firhad Hakim resigned, saying he was 'unable to work properly' after his party's defeat in the state election, and the corporation has since been run by an administrator pending an election. Whether the ward camps ran, how many dogs they reached and whether the 4,000-dog pound has a budget are not reported anywhere this report could find. A dog caught outside an institutional area is returned where it was caught under rule 11(19) of the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023.

Veterinary care: a state network of 3,338 institutions, and 41 private clinics of which 12 never close

West Bengal's government veterinary system is built for 3.75 crore livestock. Kolkata's pets are treated by a private layer that Bonbeno's directory documents better than any public body does, which is why the directory is this report's dataset.

West Bengal had 2,724 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024 and 1,445 sanctioned government doctor posts, 224 of them vacant, 15.5 percent. Its 3,338 government institutions are 113 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, 616 dispensaries and 2,609 aid centres, and its 218 mobile veterinary units cover 0.6 per lakh livestock against the central norm of one. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks the state on 13,760 livestock per registered vet, among the worst-served; the state's Belgachia campus, with its veterinary hospital, council and vaccine laboratory, is where the city's government animal care sits.

The private layer: 41 clinics, 12 of them 24-hour clinics

Bonbeno's vet directory for Kolkata, each entry checked against its Google listing on 16 October 2026 for an address, a live phone number and the hours the clinic itself publishes, lists 41 clinics and hospitals, 12 of which publish round-the-clock opening, clustered in the Mukundapur and Haltu belt in the south-east, at Phoolbagan, Belgachia and College Street in the north, and at Lake Gardens, New Alipore, Tollygunge and Kalighat in the south; the dataset beside this report has every row. Fifteen of the 41 are rated 4.5 or higher, 21 between 4.0 and 4.4 and 5 below 4.0, and 12,498 Google reviews sit behind an average of 4.32, sixth of the eight cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad; 18 have a website. Paws Avenue at Alipore, with 4,281 reviews, carries a third of them.

The directory's method note records what the city's pull dragged in: 'three were not businesses at all but places named after veterinary hospitals', a street called Animal Hospital Road and two listings for the Belgachia Veterinary Hospital Ground, a playing field; the West Bengal Veterinary Council; Apollo's human hospital; and the WB State Veterinary Hospital itself, dropped because it publishes no phone, website or hours, 'which is a real loss and not a judgement on the hospital'. The Google Maps 'pet grooming' pull of 2 November 2026 returned 33 pet groomers and 31 pet stores in its first 100 results, and the 'pet boarding' pull 67 boarding, day-care, kennel or sitter listings and 3 cat boarding services. What a consultation, a vaccination or a surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Shops, groomers and boarders: 300 Google Maps listings, the fewest websites of any city, and no register

Kolkata's pet retail is the least online of the eight cities and the least chained. Its state has published nothing on the pet shop rules.

Of the first 100 Google Maps results for 'pet shop' in Kolkata, 79 are pet stores or pet supply stores, 15 are aquarium or bird shops, 3 are clinics and 3 are not pet businesses; 91 are rated, the median listing has 52 reviews, 57.1 percent score 4.5 or higher, the lowest share of the eight cities, 18 percent have a website, also the lowest, 2 are marked temporarily closed, 8 claim 24-hour opening and 16 names advertise live animals, birds or fish. No chain appears in the shop results. The grooming pull found 33 pet groomers and 31 pet stores, a median of 71 reviews, 77.1 percent at 4.5 or higher and 43 percent with a website, with Heads Up For Tails five times and Vetic once; the boarding pull 67 boarding, day-care, kennel or sitter listings, 77.1 percent of the rated ones at 4.5 or higher, 36 percent with a website and 36 claiming 24-hour opening. Bonbeno's dog grooming cost guide and boarding versus a pet sitter cover the prices and the choice.

Registered pet shops: a state that has not reported

Every shop that sells an animal needs a certificate from the State Animal Welfare Board under the Pet Shop Rules, 2018, and the Animal Welfare Board of India wrote to every state in December 2023 that only Maharashtra had reported on implementing them. No West Bengal register, count or notice on pet shop registration could be found for this report. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause and the one state register that exists.

The dog licence: Rs 100 plus Rs 50, section 521, a form behind a login, and nothing published about who holds one

Kolkata's licence is cheap and old. The corporation prints the fee in its rate book and hides the form.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation prints its dog fees in the Licence Department's rate book for 2026-27, under 'E. Dog Licence (U/S 521)': dog registration Rs 100 per dog, dog detention Rs 10 per dog per day, and a processing fee of Rs 50. Section 521 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 is the registration power that makes the licence mandatory, and detention at Rs 10 a day is what the corporation charges to hold an impounded dog. The application itself is not public: the Dog Registration link on the corporation's site redirects to the citizen user login with a callback to the licence form, so an owner creates an account with a mobile number before the fields appear, and Bonbeno's guide could not read the document list without one. How many dogs are licensed, what a lapsed licence costs, and whether anyone has been fined are not published.

At Rs 150 for a first registration Kolkata's licence costs the same as Chennai's Rs 50 three times over and a thirteenth of Ahmedabad's Rs 2,000, and it is the only one of the eight whose portal shows nothing before the login. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India carries the rate book's figures beside every other city's, and the metro guide covers what the Kolkata Metro allows. Housing societies work under the Animal Welfare Board of India's guideline, which Bonbeno's guide to pets in apartments in India reads beside Mumbai's municipal version.

When a pet dies: no municipal pet crematorium, and a pet cemetery in New Town for Rs 2,500

Kolkata is the one city of the eight whose corporation runs no pet crematorium that this report could find. The nearest public option is a burial ground run by a different authority.

No report, notice or fee schedule this report could reach records a pet crematorium run by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation; the corporation's electric furnaces at Dhapa and elsewhere are for people. The New Town Kolkata Development Authority runs a pet dog cemetery at Action Area III, near Sankara Nethralaya, where 'the burial charge at pet dog cemetery is Rs. 2500' and the owner must produce a death certificate from a recognised veterinary doctor. The same authority runs a dog creche and clinic on the site, admitting and discharging from 8 am to 6 pm, at Rs 400 to Rs 800 a day by breed size and hours, against a vet's certificate that the dog carries no infectious disease and a copy of its vaccination record.

Of the eight cities, Mumbai has three municipal crematoria, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru one each, Pune an incinerator, and Kolkata none, as Bonbeno's city reports record. The steps, the paperwork and the private options are in Bonbeno's guide to what to do when your pet dies in India.

What a Kolkata pet owner can do with these numbers

Seven things that follow from the record, in the order a new owner meets them.

1. Register the dog on the corporation's portal: Rs 100 plus Rs 50 processing. Create the citizen login first; the form is behind it.
2. Pick the 24-hour clinic before you need it. Twelve of the 41 listed clinics publish round-the-clock opening, from Mukundapur to College Street; the Kolkata vet directory marks them and the dataset beside this report lists them. Phone before you drive.
3. Vaccinate against rabies on schedule and treat every bite as urgent. The vaccine is free at 18 corporation centres, and the state's bite count tripled in two years Press Information Bureau, Stray dogs.
4. Keep the dog collared and leashed outside. Rs 10 a day is the corporation's charge to hold an impounded dog.
5. Report an unsterilised dog to the corporation and ask which ward camp covers you. Camps in every ward were ordered in November 2025; whether they ran is unreported.
6. Buy animals only from a shop that can show its Board certificate. West Bengal has published no register; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Know that the city has no municipal crematorium. New Town's cemetery buries for Rs 2,500 against a vet's death certificate.

What this data does not measure

Kolkata's limits are mostly absences, and the report names them rather than filling them.

• There is no count of Kolkata's street dogs, pet dogs, licences, bites, sterilisations or rabies deaths published by the corporation. The two population figures it has given are reproduced because they are the only ones; neither has a method.
• The bite series is the state's, from the national surveillance table, and a low figure measures reporting as much as biting; the city has no series of its own.
• The corporation's rabies claim is from 2017, has not been withdrawn, and is a statement about deaths reported to it.
• The pound capacities are round numbers from two reports, and nothing after January 2026 reports whether the new pound, the ward camps or the contract vets exist.
• The licence figures are the rate book's; documents, validity and penalty sit behind a login this report did not create, and the licence count is unpublished.
• The directory is a window, not a census, and it is this report's dataset only because nothing public competes with it: 41 listings from a 60-record pull, Google's ratings on one day, and a 24-hour claim read from published hours and not verified by a call.
• The crematorium row is a negative finding. A facility may exist that no report this search could reach describes; the New Town cemetery is the one public option with a published charge.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the directory dataset and Google Maps layer were produced by scripts kept with the report.

1. The corporation's statements are from the Millennium Post of 3 October 2017, 27 January 2023 and 11 November 2025, The Plurals of 3 January 2026 and The Tribune of 5 June 2026; the state census from the Rajya Sabha reply used in Bonbeno's street dog report.
2. The bite and rabies figures are Annexures I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025 as published by the Press Information Bureau. The Supreme Court order is from All India Radio's report of 7 November 2025 and rule 11(19) from the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 as gazetted.
3. The licence figures are the corporation's Licence Department rate book for 2026-27 and its Dog Registration page, both read for Bonbeno's dog registration guide on 18 September 2026 Kolkata Municipal Corporation; the rate book could not be re-fetched on 2 November 2026, when the corporation's server returned 500 on each attempt. The cemetery is from the New Town Kolkata Development Authority's own service page. The pet shop record is the Animal Welfare Board of India's circular of 28 December 2023. The state veterinary figures are the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha replies used in the Vet Access Index Open Government Data Platform India Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287.
4. The dataset is Bonbeno's Kolkata directory file as checked on 16 October 2026, with the rating-band counts computed over it. The Google Maps layer is three Apify runs of the Google Maps Scraper, 'pet shop' on 1 November 2026 and 'pet grooming' and 'pet boarding' on 2 November 2026, 100 results each, classified by Google's primary category by the summary scripts in the research folder.