Stray dogs in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 2026: 5,300 in the census after a 35 percent fall, about 7,000 in Port Blair alone by its council's 2012 estimate, 455 dog bites and no rabies death in the national table, a rabies-free status that rests on a record and eight dog brains rather than a declaration, 568 dogs sterilised in one month, feral dogs on the leatherback beaches, 14 of 45 vet posts vacant and no published pet licence

Stray dogs in Andaman and Nicobar Islands: the territory's numbers on one page

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a chain of islands whose dog record fits on one page, and much of the page is blank. Sixteen rows, each from the document named.

Two rows carry the weight. The national surveillance table laid before Parliament records 455 dog bites in the islands in 2024 and no suspected rabies death in any year, and the national rabies programme says that 'Except for Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Islands, human cases of rabies are reported from all over the country'. The rest of this report is about what that status rests on, and about a dog population that has been counted twice and written about mostly in local news. The capital was renamed Sri Vijaya Puram on 13 September 2024; older sources call it Port Blair, and this report uses each source's own name.

How many stray dogs the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have: 5,300 in the census, about 7,000 in one city

The census counted fewer dogs in the whole territory than the capital's council estimated in the capital alone.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands had 5,300 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 35.1 percent fewer than the 8,167 of 2012, in the same years India's count fell 10.7 percent, and 13.4 for every 1,000 people against the national 11.5 National Commission on Population. Among large states, Maharashtra counted 10.4 per 1,000, Karnataka 17.3 and Tamil Nadu 5.8. In 2012 only 13.3 percent of the territory's street dogs were counted in urban areas, close to India's 14.6 percent, which on 8,167 dogs is about 1,090 urban dogs. The census also counted 1,459 stray cattle in 2019.

In April 2012, the year of that census, the Port Blair Municipal Council's secretary put the city's own stray dogs at about 7,000, with four to six dog catchers and one van, and the council paid Rs 450 for each sterilised dog. The two figures are different instruments: one is an enumeration across every island, the other an official's estimate for one city, and they are printed here side by side and not set against each other. No count of any kind has been published since 2019. The territory's veterinary department noted in April 2025 that the 21st Livestock Census was collecting data on mobile devices 'For the first time'; no table from it for the islands could be found. Bonbeno's street dog report explains how a census and an estimate diverge.

Feral dogs on the leatherback beaches of Great Nicobar and Little Andaman

The islands' dog problem that no national table measures is on the nesting beaches. In a survey from March to April 2016, 'Of the 2,140 nests that were recorded in the Nicobar region, 57% (1,223 nests) were predated by either feral dogs, water monitor lizards or in some cases feral pigs', and predation 'by feral dogs and pigs that once belonged to the Nicobari settlements that existed prior to the 2004 tsunami was found to be particularly high on the Great Nicobar Island'. The authors recommended that where predation 'from feral dogs and pigs are high, the feral animals need to be either controlled or culled to reduce the pressure'. The same paper quotes a 2011 survey that put about 70 percent of Galathea's nests as predated by feral pigs, not dogs. On Little Andaman, four seasons of monitoring from 2008 to 2011 found monitor lizards took most nests, 55 of 91 nests in the 2010-11 season, 'However, the threat of nest depredation by feral dogs has been increasing'. The islands host 'the largest nesting population of leatherback turtles in India'. No count of feral dogs on any Nicobar island has been published, and no sterilisation campaign figure covers the Nicobar district.

Dog bites and rabies in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands: 455 bites, no deaths, and a status nobody declared

The islands record dog bites like everywhere else in India; what they do not record is rabies.

The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives the Andaman and Nicobar Islands 345 dog bites in 2022, 528 in 2023, 455 in 2024 and 52 in January 2025, and no suspected human rabies death in any year. On the table's own figure the islands recorded 112.6 bites per lakh people in 2024, under half India's 265.7, close to Delhi's 115.9 and far below Maharashtra's 381.1, Karnataka's 530.7 and Tamil Nadu's 623.2. Against the census's 5,300 dogs, that is 8.6 bites for every 100 stray dogs, against 24.3 for India. No territory series exists to set beside it. No State Action Plan for Rabies Elimination for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands could be found on the national rabies programme's site. Bonbeno's dog bite report carries every state's row.

Rabies-free: a record of absence, eight dog brains, and no declaration

The islands' rabies-free status rests on one published study. Investigators from Bengaluru visited in 2017 as part of the WHO and APCRI multi-centric rabies survey, reviewed ten years of records from 2007 to 2017 and found 'no evidence of human/animal rabies in the Islands', and 'Eight dog brain samples from Andaman, Nicobar Islands' tested negative. The same paper opens by saying the islands 'have been historically rabies-free' but that 'reliable laboratory evidence to substantiate rabies-free status was lacking'. Eight brains is a small sample for some 5,300 dogs across a chain of islands, and no later testing figure has been published. No notification declaring the territory rabies-free could be found. Goa, by comparison, holds a formal notification of 17 May 2021 declaring it a 'Rabies Controlled Area', which its campaign calls the first such declaration by an Indian state.

The territory's own veterinary department describes the status in two different ways. A release on World Rabies Day 2025 said the islands 'remain among the few regions in India officially considered rabies-free' and that 'No confirmed cases of rabies in humans or animals have ever been reported in the islands', and a January 2026 release said they 'continue to proudly maintain their completely rabies-free status'. A December 2025 release on a school campaign at Swaraj Dweep described the department's aim as making the islands 'completely safe from dog-bite incidents and eventually rabies-free'. The record supports the narrower claim: no rabies case has been reported or found. The ICMR estimate for India as a whole is 5,726 human rabies deaths a year, which is why experts at the Pasteur Institute of India, on a 2026 visit by island journalists, urged that dogs and cats arriving from the mainland be vaccinated and certified.

The Animal Birth Control programme in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands: 3,900 dogs, a gap, then 568 in a month

The islands sterilise in campaigns, and the campaigns are counted in press releases.

From 2009 to April 2012 the NGO Friendicoes SECA sterilised nearly 3,900 dogs in Port Blair under contract to the Municipal Council, which paid Rs 450 a dog after sanitary inspectors and veterinary doctors counted the removed organs, and the council's secretary said he had raised the target from 100 dogs a month to 200. No later cumulative figure for the city could be found. By May 2025 an unnamed council official told The Wave Andaman 'We get calls every day, but we cannot act', citing the rule that 'sterilised dogs must be returned to the same spot they were picked up from within a week'.

In July 2025 the Andaman and Nicobar Administration launched 'Partnering for Animal Welfare and Sterilization (PAWS)', with the stated aim to 'achieve 100% sterilization coverage in tourism-centric areas', at a workshop in Sri Vijaya Puram with the Blue Cross of India, Mission Rabies, the WVS taskforce and the Animal Welfare Board of India. In September 2025 the veterinary hospital at Junglighat sterilised 14 dogs in two days. Then, from 6 December 2025 to 13 January 2026, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services ran a three-phase campaign that sterilised 568 stray dogs: 212 at the dispensaries on Shaheed Dweep and Swaraj Dweep, 275 at the veterinary hospitals in Hut Bay, Rangat and Diglipur, and 81 more on Swaraj Dweep, 202 on that island in all. That is about one in nine of the census's 5,300 dogs in five weeks, though the census is seven years old and the campaign worked in tourist islands and towns, not across the territory. None of the three phases reached the Nicobar district.

What it costs, and what was asked of the administration

The only per-dog price on record for the islands is the council's Rs 450 of 2012; the Centre's revised scheme pays Rs 800 a dog, and the Animal Welfare Board released no ABC grant to any state or territory in the four years to 2024-25. No budget for the 2025 and 2026 campaigns could be found. In August 2025, after the Supreme Court's order of 11 August, the group Hindu Rashtra Shakti petitioned the Lieutenant Governor, the Chief Secretary and the Deputy Commissioner of South Andaman to move street dogs from places such as Carbyn's Cove Beach, Marina Park and Flag Point into shelters; the Court revised that order on 22 August 2025 to restore release after sterilisation. No shelter for dogs in the islands has been announced in any source read.

The courts: the Calcutta High Court at Port Blair and the Supreme Court's orders

The islands fall under the Calcutta High Court, which sits in Kolkata and holds a circuit bench in Sri Vijaya Puram, and neither has said anything about the islands' dogs that could be found.

No order of the Calcutta High Court on stray dogs in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands could be found. The circuit bench's public interest cases in 2026 concern the Great Nicobar project and the buffer zones of the Galathea and Campbell Bay national parks, the same coast as the leatherback beaches; on 6 May 2026 a bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen overruled the objections to their maintainability and listed them for hearing, and none mentions dogs. The Supreme Court's orders apply here as everywhere: the order of 22 August 2025 restored sterilise-vaccinate-release for healthy dogs nationally, the order of 7 November 2025 told local bodies to clear dogs from schools, hospitals, bus stands and stations, and on 19 May 2026 the Court upheld its directions and told every High Court to monitor them. Bonbeno's West Bengal report follows the Calcutta High Court's own stray dog cases.

Compensation for a dog bite has not been set for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by any court, scheme or government order that could be found. Elsewhere in this series, the Punjab and Haryana High Court fixed Rs 10,000 a tooth mark and Karnataka pays Rs 5,000 for a bite and Rs 5 lakh for a death.

Veterinary care in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands: 66 registered vets and no mobile unit

The islands have more vets per person than India, fewer than any other small territory, and no ambulance for animals on the water or the road.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands had 66 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 59 in 2021, and 14 of their 45 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 31.1 percent against 25.8 percent for India. The territory's 72 government institutions are 10 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, 13 dispensaries and 49 aid centres, and it had no operational mobile veterinary unit in January 2025, against 4,016 in India. Against 1,45,394 livestock in the 2019 census, the register works out to 2,203 livestock per vet against the national 6,106, and 16.3 vets per lakh people against 6.3. The territory has no veterinary college on the Veterinary Council of India's list, so the territory trains none of its own vets. Lakshadweep, the other island territory, had 35 vets and 12 of 13 posts vacant.

Veterinary surgeons and para-veterinary staff from this network ran the 568 sterilisations of 2025 and 2026. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, none of them in the islands; what a consultation costs on the mainland is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India, and Bonbeno's Vet Access Index explains the arithmetic.

Pets and the rules in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands: a licence nobody has published

The pet side of the islands' record is almost entirely empty, and each gap is named.

No pet dog licence fee, by-law or count of registered pets for Sri Vijaya Puram or any other local body in the islands could be found published, which makes the territory the only one in this series with nothing at all to print on licensing. The territory's veterinary department lists its eDistrict services and an Animal Birth Control programme in its April 2025 newsletter, and its stated mission is to 'maintain a disease-free UT'; it names no pet registration. A pet arriving from the mainland is the obvious way rabies would reach the islands, and no published rule requiring a vaccination certificate at the jetty or airport could be found. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist elsewhere.

Pet shops, native breeds and end of life: none on the record

No count of pet shops or breeders in the islands, registered or not, could be found. The Pet Shop Rules, 2018 require every shop to hold a State Board certificate, and the Animal Welfare Board's circular of December 2023 recorded that no state or territory except Maharashtra had reported how many it had registered; Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause. No dog breed recognised by the Kennel Club of India is named for the islands; the dog on most island streets is the Indian pariah dog, which copes with the hot, humid coast. No pet crematorium could be found in the territory; Bonbeno's guide to when your pet dies in India covers the steps.

What an Andaman and Nicobar pet owner can do with these numbers

Six things that follow from the record, in the order an owner meets them.

1. Vaccinate your dog and cat against rabies every year and keep the card. The islands' status rests on no case being found, and the department's own release says 'being rabies-free does not mean being risk-free'.
2. Vaccinate a pet before you bring it from the mainland, and carry the certificate. Experts quoted on a 2026 departmental visit urged exactly that.
3. After any bite, wash the wound and report it the same day at a hospital or health centre. The department's campaign asks for every bite to be reported.
4. Book your pet's sterilisation at a government veterinary hospital. Hut Bay sterilised 14 pet dogs and cats on World Veterinary Day 2026.
5. Keep dogs off the turtle beaches in the nesting season. Feral dogs already take eggs on Great Nicobar and Little Andaman.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that shows its State Board certificate. The Rules require one.

What this data does not measure

The islands' record is thin in specific places, and each gap is named here rather than filled.

• The dog count is a 2019 census and a 2012 city estimate; the 21st Livestock Census had published no table for the islands that could be found by 11 November 2026, and no count of feral dogs on any Nicobar island exists.
• There is one bite series, the IDSP table, and no territory series, district split or State Action Plan to set beside it. A 2022 Lok Sabha answer said to carry the islands' animal bites from 2019 to 2022 could not be opened, because the parliamentary library host refused the connection, and it is not used.
• The rabies-free status rests on a record review and eight dog brains from 2017; no later laboratory testing figure and no declaration could be found.
• No compensation rule, no High Court order and no shelter exists in print for the islands.
• The sterilisation record is press releases: 3,900 to 2012 and 568 in 2025 and 2026, with nothing for the years between, nothing for the Nicobar district and no spending figure.
• No pet licence, pet shop register, pet crematorium or private clinic count could be found, and pet spending per household is not here because the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey's unit-level data had not been obtained.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the territory's rows are the same rows Bonbeno's national reports computed from the parliamentary annexes.

1. The census figures are from the Rajya Sabha statement of 6 August 2025 and Table 79 of the 19th Livestock Census, with per-1,000 rates from the National Commission on Population's projections; the 2012 city estimate and early sterilisation count from Andaman Sheekha.
2. The bite and death figures are from Annexures I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025; the rabies status from the National Rabies Control Programme, the Indian Journal of Public Health study, read through the NCBI E-utilities, the WHO India page, the Goa notification for comparison and the department's releases in Andaman Sheekha and the Andaman Chronicle Andaman Sheekha, 'Andaman Media Delegation… Andaman Sheekha, 'World Veterinary Day 2026… Andaman Chronicle Andaman Chronicle, Denis Giles.
3. The programme figures are from Andaman Sheekha, The Wave Andaman The Wave Andaman The Wave Andaman The Wave Andaman, the department's newsletter read with pypdf, PIB and the Lok Sabha reply of 2 December 2025; the turtle figures from the Indian Ocean Turtle Newsletter, read with pypdf Swaminathan A, Namboothri N, Shanker K.
4. The court figures are from the Calcutta High Court judgment on Indian Kanoon, the Supreme Court's orders Supreme Court of India, News On AIR and the ABC Rules; the veterinary figures from the Lok Sabha replies Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the Rajya Sabha annexure and the VCI list; the rename from The Tribune.
5. The pet rules are from the Pet Shop Rules and the AWBI circular. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 11 November 2026 through Apify runs of Google's India results for 'dog bite cases in andaman and nicobar' and 'is andaman rabies free'. Prices are in Indian rupees.