Stray dogs in Andhra Pradesh, 2026: 4,71,884 counted in 2019 after a 62 percent fall, four state estimates from 2 lakh to 5.15 lakh, 2,44,914 dog bites in 2024 by the state's count, 29 rabies deaths in 2022 in one parliamentary reply and 3 in another, 3,61,388 dogs sterilised, 39 centres able to do 1,619 a day, Rs 20 crore a year on anti-rabies vaccine and a Rs 5 lakh ex gratia after a Guntur child's death

Stray dogs in Andhra Pradesh: the state's numbers on one page

Andhra Pradesh's bite counts agree with the national table to the hundred; its dog counts disagree with each other by a factor of two and a half. Fifteen rows, from thirteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. The state counted 2,44,914 dog bites in 2024, 260 fewer than the national table Press Information Bureau, Stray dogs, and it had sterilised 3,61,388 dogs by November 2025 against estimates of its dog population that range from 2 lakh to 5.15 lakh. The rest of this report is about a state that counts its bites better than almost any other and does not know how far its sterilisations have got, because it does not know how many dogs it has.

How many stray dogs Andhra Pradesh has: 4.72 lakh in the census and four estimates since

The census figure fell by 62 percent in seven years, and the state has published four different totals in eight months.

Andhra Pradesh had 4,71,884 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 61.9 percent fewer than the 12,37,988 of 2012, the steepest fall of any large state, and 9.0 dogs for every 1,000 people against the national 11.5 National Commission on Population; the 2012 figure was taken before the state's bifurcation in 2014 and covered Telangana as well, which explains much of the drop, and in 2012 15.2 percent of the dogs were counted in urban areas and the rest rural. Since then the state has given four totals. In April 2025 the state was reported to be 'home to 3,43,656 stray dogs, of which only 68,192 have been sterilized'; the same week the Municipal Administration Minister, P. Narayana, said a survey had identified two lakh; in October 2025 the figure given was 2.3 lakh, with 1.30 lakh sterilised; and in November 2025 the department's own drive was set 'against 5.15 lakh strays'. Two of those are five weeks apart and differ by 2.85 lakh; the likeliest reading is that the smaller figures cover the urban local bodies only, but no document says so. Bonbeno's street dog report explains how census and estimate diverge.

Two cities have published counts: Guntur Municipal Corporation about 31,000 dogs, nearly 11,000 of them already through sterilisation and vaccination, in March 2026; and Rajamahendravaram 25,865 identified, 12,126 sterilised and vaccinated, in May 2026 Deccan Chronicle. No count for Visakhapatnam or Vijayawada from 2025 or 2026 could be opened. Against Bengaluru's 2023 survey, which found 71.8 percent sterilised, Guntur at about a third and Rajamahendravaram at 47 percent are below the 70 percent the Centre's advisory sets.

Dog bites and rabies: 2,44,914 bites in 2024, a state count that matches the national one, and two death counts that do not

Andhra Pradesh is the one state in this series whose bite figures and the national table say the same thing.

The state counted 1,91,995 dog bites in 2022, 2,11,915 in 2023 and 2,44,914 in 2024, 7,05,555 in three years, and 59,725 in the first three months of 2025. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives 1,92,360, 2,12,146 and 2,45,174 for the same years and 23,180 for January 2025, with 3, 0 and 1 suspected rabies deaths. The two differ by under 0.2 percent each year, closer than any other state Bonbeno has read: in Maharashtra, Kerala, Odisha and Rajasthan the state's count runs two to four times the national table's. On the IDSP figure Andhra Pradesh recorded 459.6 bites per lakh people in 2024, well above the national 265.7 and above Karnataka's 530.7 only in the south, and 52.0 bites for every 100 dogs the census counted, the most of any large state. In April 2026 the state's figures were reported as 'more than 2.16 lakh people bitten during the past year', with no period defined; if that is a twelve-month window it is below the 2024 total, and it is printed as reported. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

The districts: Eluru 16,000, Alluri Sitarama Raju 3,800

Eluru recorded the most bites, around 16,000; Kurnool, Vijayawada, Prakasam, Vizianagaram and Nellore more than 12,000 each; and Alluri Sitarama Raju, the tribal hill district, the fewest at about 3,800. The same report gives the load by facility: 8 to 10 cases a month at each of the 1,144 primary health centres, 10 to 12 at the 560 urban centres, 30 to 40 at the 172 community health centres and 50 to 60 at the 49 area hospitals, and nearly Rs 20 crore a year spent on anti-rabies vaccine, with a similar amount on sterilisation. A rabid dog bit at least 45 people in Badvel, Kadapa district, in May 2025, and some were moved to RIMS Kadapa 'due to a shortage of rabies vaccine'.

Rabies deaths are where the record splits. A Lok Sabha reply of 21 July 2023, as The News Minute reported it, gave Andhra Pradesh 29 rabies deaths in 2022, 'the third highest number of deaths in India' with Karnataka and Maharashtra; the IDSP table gives Andhra Pradesh 3 suspected rabies deaths for the same year. Both are parliamentary figures from the same ministry, and the first one's data stream is not named; the ICMR estimate for India is 5,726 deaths a year, which makes the higher of the two the more plausible. In 2024 a father and son in Bhimunipatnam, Visakhapatnam district, died of suspected rabies after their own pet dog bit them and they 'took only the first dose and skipped the remaining ones'; that is two deaths in one family against one in the IDSP table for the whole state that year.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 3.61 lakh dogs, 39 centres, 1,619 a day, and a death that set the pace

Andhra Pradesh has sterilised more dogs than most states have counted, and its programme was reorganised twice in 2025.

A four-year-old boy was killed by stray dogs in Guntur in April 2025, on the 4th by one report and the 6th by another; Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced Rs 5 lakh ex gratia and ordered the sterilisation programme completed within four months The Hans India, 'Amid rising dog bite…, and the minister said orders had been issued 'to sterilise at least 1,000 dogs per day' in a 200-day statewide drive. By October 2025, 70 of the 123 urban local bodies had been allotted to four NGOs but only 45 were running drives, the Animal Husbandry department had enlisted 40 assistant directors and 80 vets, and the target was 90 percent by December 2025 and 100 percent by February 2026. On 17 November 2025, citing the Supreme Court's order of 7 November, Special Chief Secretary S. Suresh Kumar and Director P. Sampath Kumar ordered every municipal commissioner to set daily or weekly targets, hire certified agencies, survey dogs, move aggressive or rabid dogs to special pounds, set up designated feeding areas and ban street feeding; the department reported 1,36,656 dogs sterilised since June 2024 on top of 2,24,732 before, 45 urban bodies with ABC centres and 197 trained handlers. 3,61,388 dogs sterilised is 77 percent of the 2019 census and 70 percent of the November 2025 estimate.

What the Supreme Court was told, and what the Centre pays

At the Supreme Court on 28 January 2026 the amicus told the bench that Andhra Pradesh had 39 ABC centres with a combined capacity to sterilise 1,619 dogs a day, and asked for an audit of how fully they were used; the state said 12,000 of the 14,000 institutions it had identified had been fenced, the fullest fencing figure any state in this series gave, where Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala gave none. At 1,619 a day the centres could do about 5.9 lakh dogs a year, more than any estimate of the state's dogs; the November 2025 count of 45 centres and the January 2026 count of 39 come from different documents and are printed as they stand. The Supreme Court's order of 22 August 2025 restored release after sterilisation for healthy dogs, its order of 7 November 2025 told every local body to fence and clear schools, hospitals, bus stands and stations, and on 19 May 2026 it upheld those directions; the case is the Court's own suo motu matter, not a case against Andhra Pradesh, whatever some indexes print. The Animal Welfare Board released no ABC grant to any state in the four years to 2024-25, and the revised scheme offers Rs 800 a dog; Andhra Pradesh's own Rs 20 crore a year is what has paid for its programme.

The cities and the High Court: ward committees, a helpline, and a PIL

In the cities, Vijayawada Municipal Corporation set up four-member stray dog committees in all 64 wards in March 2026, each headed by a sanitary inspector; Rajamahendravaram opened a toll-free complaint number, 7093221991, in May 2026 and runs one ABC centre; and in March 2026 Visakhapatnam's chief veterinary officer acknowledged 'some shortfalls in conducting the ABC and ARV'. In the High Court, a PIL seeking a ban on unapproved feeding, a public dog-attack dashboard and enclosures, WP(PIL) 81 of 2024, drew notice from the Chief Justice's bench on 19 June 2024, which asked whether the state kept a count of strays, vaccinated and neutered; its outcome was not found, and no court-ordered compensation scheme exists, so the Rs 5 lakh for Guntur was an executive grant.

Veterinary care: 5,643 vets, 340 mobile units, and the best staffed government posts of the large states after Tamil Nadu

Andhra Pradesh's veterinary network sits close to the national average on every ratio.

Andhra Pradesh had 5,643 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 4,915 in 2021, and 293 of its 1,781 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 16.5 percent against 25.8 percent for India. Its 3,472 government institutions are 337 hospitals and polyclinics, 1,577 dispensaries and 1,558 aid centres, and its 340 operational mobile veterinary units are the fourth most of any state, 1.0 per lakh livestock. With 3,40,67,616 livestock in the 2019 census, the state has 6,037 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, 9,812 per institution against 7,906, and 10.6 vets per lakh people against 6.3; its three recognised colleges have 300 approved seats. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks every state on the same arithmetic. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad), none in Andhra Pradesh, so there is no private clinic layer here for Visakhapatnam or Vijayawada; what a consultation or surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: no published licence, no shop register, the Pandikona off the register, and nowhere to cremate

Andhra Pradesh's pet rules are the national ones; its cities have published none of their own that could be read.

No pet licence fee, portal, fine or count for Visakhapatnam or Vijayawada could be found published, so Andhra Pradesh's pet owners register nowhere the public can see; next door, Hyderabad registers dogs free and Chennai at Rs 50 with a microchip. The Bhimunipatnam deaths of 2024 followed a pet dog's bite, which is why a licence that requires a current rabies certificate, as Bhubaneswar's and Chennai's do, is a public health rule rather than paperwork. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist, and its guide to pets in apartments in India reads the Animal Welfare Board's guideline that residents' associations work under. The Rules require a State Board certificate for every shop that sells an animal and every breeder; the Board's circular of December 2023 recorded that no state had provided its count, and Andhra Pradesh has published none. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause.

The Pandikona and end of life: not registered, and nowhere

ICAR-NBAGR's register lists six Indian dog breeds, Rajapalayam, Chippiparai and Kombai from Tamil Nadu, the Mudhol Hound from Karnataka, the Gaddi from Himachal Pradesh and the Changkhi from Ladakh, and none is from Andhra Pradesh; the Pandikona, the sighthound associated with Kurnool district, is on neither that register nor the Kennel Club of India's list, though the state's Ongole and Punganur cattle are registered breeds. Bonbeno's report on the register carries the six. The dog most of the state shares a road with is the Indian pariah dog. No civic pet crematorium in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur or Tirupati could be read; the nearest facilities in Bonbeno's cremation report are Hyderabad's and Chennai's, and its guide to when your pet dies in India covers burial.

What an Andhra Pradesh pet owner can do with these numbers

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

1. Vaccinate your dog against rabies every year and keep the card. No city licence holds the record for you, and a pet's bite killed two people in Bhimunipatnam.
2. Finish every dose after a bite. The state counted 2,44,914 bites in 2024, and the course only works complete.
3. Report the dog, not the neighbour. Rajamahendravaram's toll-free number and Vijayawada's ward committees take complaints.
4. Know which order applies to your building. Institutional premises are fenced and cleared to shelters; a residential road gets its sterilised dogs back under rule 11(19).
5. Feed at the designated feeding area, not on the street. The state banned street feeding in November 2025.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that can show its State Board certificate. No register exists; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Plan for burial. No civic crematorium in the state could be read; Bonbeno's guide covers the steps.

What this data does not measure

Each figure here was produced by a different office for a different purpose, and the gaps are specific.

• The dog count is a 2019 census and four undated-method estimates that differ by 3.15 lakh; none says what area it covers. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 8 November 2026.
• The 2012 census figure covers the undivided state, Telangana included, so the 61.9 percent fall is mostly bifurcation.
• The two rabies death counts for 2022 come from two parliamentary replies and differ ten-fold; the higher one's data source is not named.
• The 2.16 lakh bites of April 2026 have no defined period, and the district figures are rounded as reported.
• The 3,61,388 sterilisations are the department's reported totals, not counts of distinct dogs, and the 45 and 39 centre counts come from different documents.
• No assembly reply, G.O. number or High Court order on compensation could be read.
• No private clinic layer, no licence count, no pet shop register and no crematorium exist here, 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 state 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 estimates from The Hans India of 10 April and 17 November 2025 The Hans India, 'AP intensifies drive… and Deccan Chronicle of 9 April and 11 October 2025 and 17 March and 19 May 2026 Deccan Chronicle Deccan Chronicle Deccan Chronicle.
2. The bite and death figures are from The Hans India, Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025, Deccan Chronicle of 14 April 2026 and 26 May 2025 Deccan Chronicle, The News Minute of 23 July 2023, ETV Bharat of 26 June 2024 and the WHO India page.
3. The programme and court figures are from Deccan Chronicle of 8 April 2025 and 21 March 2026 Deccan Chronicle, Verdictum of 28 January 2026, LiveLaw of 19 June 2024, the Supreme Court's orders Supreme Court of India, News On AIR, the ABC Rules, the Lok Sabha reply of 2 December 2025 and PIB.
4. The veterinary figures are from the Lok Sabha replies of 2 December 2025, 11 February 2025 and 28 March 2023 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the Rajya Sabha annexure on data.gov.in and the VCI college list.
5. The pet and breed figures are from the Pet Shop Rules, the AWBI circular and ICAR-NBAGR's dog register. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 8 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results for 'stray dogs in visakhapatnam' and 'stray dogs in andhra pradesh'.