Stray dogs in Odisha, 2026: 17,34,399 counted in 2019, the most per head of any state and double 2012, 2,59,107 dog bites in 2023 by the state's own count against 92,848 in the national table, Bhubaneswar's first census of 47,126 dogs with 15.7 percent sterilised, a Rs 1,650 surgery running at a quarter of its target, a Rs 10 lakh High Court award against Puri, a Rs 500 licence and an LPG pet crematorium

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

Odisha has the densest dog population any census has recorded in India and two bite counts that stopped agreeing in 2023. Sixteen rows, from fourteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. The state told its assembly of 2,59,107 dog bites in 2023, 2.8 times the 92,848 the national table records Press Information Bureau, Stray dogs, and Bhubaneswar's first census found 47,126 dogs, 85 percent of them unsterilised. The rest of this report is about a state with more dogs per head than anywhere else in India and a sterilisation programme that, by its own figures, has barely begun.

How many stray dogs Odisha has: 17.34 lakh in the census, 'over seven lakh' by the minister, 47,126 in Bhubaneswar

Odisha's count doubled in seven years while India's fell, and the state's own minister now quotes a figure less than half the census.

Odisha had 17,34,399 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 101.1 percent more than the 8,62,520 of 2012, the second-largest count of any state after Uttar Pradesh and 39.7 dogs for every 1,000 people, the highest rate of any state and more than three times the national 11.5 National Commission on Population; in 2012, 20.6 percent were counted in urban areas and the rest rural, and the 2019 census recorded 1,51,703 stray cattle. The assembly was given the same 17.34 lakh in December 2024. In August 2025 the Fisheries and Animal Resources Development Minister put the state's street dogs at 'over seven lakh', against about 64,000 registered pet dogs, and promised a fresh count; neither the seven lakh nor the census comes with a published method, and no statewide count has followed. Bonbeno's street dog report explains why a household-enumerator census can over- or under-read, and Odisha is the one large state where the official doubt runs downward.

Bhubaneswar's census: 47,126 dogs, 410 teams, two hours a morning

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation counted 47,126 stray dogs across all 67 wards between 18 and 25 September 2025, with 410 two-person teams working from 5 am to 7 am: 23,047 unsterilised males, 15,552 unsterilised females, 1,124 puppies, and 4,068 males and 3,335 females already sterilised Sambad English, 'Vaccination. That is 7,403 sterilised, 15.7 percent of the count, an average of 703 dogs a ward with Ward 23 the highest at 1,703, and 36 dogs for every 1,000 of the city's nearly 13 lakh people against the state's 39 and the nation's 11. Earlier guesses had put the city at nearly 70,000. Against Bengaluru's 2023 survey, which found 71.8 percent sterilised, or Mumbai's 62.9 percent, Bhubaneswar is at the start of the work, and the dog census itself is the most useful number any Odisha body has published: it gives the denominator the sterilisation programme needs.

Dog bites and rabies: 2,59,107 bites in 2023 by the state, 92,848 by the national table, and deaths no one counts

Odisha's two bite series agree for 2022 and then diverge by a factor of nearly three.

The Fisheries and Animal Resources Development Minister told the Odisha assembly in December 2024 that 'a total of 5,20,237 dog bite cases were reported in Odisha' between January 2023 and October 2024, 2,59,107 in 2023 and 2,43,565 in the first ten months of 2024, with the highest months January 2024 at 33,547, February at 32,561 and March at 29,801, about 777 bites a day, after 64,642 in 2022 and 59,085 in 2021. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Odisha 65,396 bites in 2022, 92,848 in 2023, 1,66,792 in 2024 and 24,478 in January 2025, with 0, 1 and 0 suspected rabies deaths. For 2022 the two agree within 1.2 percent; for 2023 the state's count is 2.8 times the table's, and its ten-month 2024 count is 46 percent above the table's full year. A fourfold rise in one year is not what dogs do; it is what happens when a state starts counting at every facility, and Odisha's assembly figure is the one its own minister uses. Even on the IDSP figure Odisha recorded 375.5 bites per lakh people in 2024, above the national 265.7. In December 2023 Bhubaneswar's Capital Hospital was seeing 60 to 70 bite cases a day. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

Odisha publishes no rabies death count of its own. The minister told the assembly the state plans to be rabies-free by 2030, and the national table records one suspected death in three years, but in August 2025 a rabid dog that had bitten six people in Chinchera village, Bolangir district, on 23 July left two of them dead at VIMSAR, Burla, a national-level para-athlete among them. Stray dogs mauled an elderly woman to death in Balasore district in November 2024 and a six-year-old girl in Koraput district in December 2024. The ICMR estimate for India is 5,726 rabies deaths a year against the 54 the national table recorded in 2024; two deaths from one dog in one village is already twice Odisha's three-year total in that table.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 4,605 dogs in a year, a capital centre at a quarter of its target, and a court stay

Odisha's sterilisation programme is small, slow and, for six months of 2023, stopped by its own High Court.

The assembly was told that 'around 4,605 stray dogs were sterilised in eight urban areas of Odisha during 2022-23', which against the census's 17.34 lakh is 0.27 percent in a year and against the minister's seven lakh is 0.66 percent. At the 70 percent coverage the Centre's advisory sets, seven lakh dogs need about 4.9 lakh sterilised. Bhubaneswar runs its programme at the Mancheswar ABC centre, which can house 350 dogs and operate on 70 a day but was doing 30 to 40; the corporation's target was 2,000 a month, it achieved 400 to 500, and 1,456 dogs in the three months to August 2025; the operator, the Vets' Society for Animal Welfare and Rural Development of Hyderabad, holds a three-year contract at Rs 1,650 a dog, Rs 200 of it for transport. Rs 1,650 is the Animal Welfare Board's own benchmark rate and twice the Rs 800 the Centre's revised scheme offers, which released nothing in the four years before. After the census the corporation said it would scale the programme up 'three to four times its current scale'; at 485 a month, sterilising the 38,599 unsterilised adults the census found would take more than six years.

The courts: a stay, a 24-hour order, and Rs 10 lakh for Puri

The Orissa High Court stayed the state's sterilisation drive, Bhubaneswar's included, on 6 July 2023, and lifted the stay in January 2024 after the state filed an affidavit saying it had formed a state-level ABC monitoring and implementation committee. On 28 August 2023, in The National Law University of Odisha v. Cuttack Municipal Corporation, W.P.(C) 28155 of 2023, a bench of Chief Justice Subhasis Talapatra and Justice Savitri Ratho ordered all stray dogs relocated off the NLU campus within 24 hours, after a student with cerebral palsy had been 'chased by the stray dogs 15 times and bitten 7 times within the last one month'. On 13 December 2023, in Bibhuti Charan Mohanty v. State of Odisha, W.P.(C) 21267 of 2016, Acting Chief Justice B. R. Sarangi and Justice M. S. Raman ordered Puri's civic body to pay Rs 10 lakh to the father of a child killed by stray dogs in Jagannath Colony, Puri, on 1 December 2016, within four weeks and with 6 percent interest if late, finding that the death 'was caused due to negligence'. That award sits above Karnataka's Rs 5 lakh compensation rule and Haryana's DAYALU scale, and it was made against the civic body, not the state.

What the state ordered after the Supreme Court

On 23 August 2025, the day after the Supreme Court's order restoring release after sterilisation, the minister announced that 'stray dogs will be sterilised, vaccinated, and then released back in their original locations', that violent or rabid dogs would go to shelters, that designated feeding zones would be created and roadside meat cutting and offal disposal banned, and that the 1962 helpline would take calls about injured strays OdishaTV, 'Over 7 lakh stray dogs… Odisha Bytes, 'Home To 7L Stray Dogs. After the order of 7 November 2025 on fencing schools, hospitals, bus stands and stations, Chief Secretary Anu Garg chaired a review on 3 January 2026 and directed every department to 'strictly adhere' to it; no order text with deadlines could be read. At the Supreme Court on 28 January 2026 the state said it had picked up 'significant number of dogs from institutions', and the amicus said places like Puri and Konark should have ABC centres. On 19 May 2026 the Court upheld its November directions.

Veterinary care: 2,882 vets, 3,553 aid centres, no mobile units, and a quarter of posts empty

Odisha's government network is wide and thin: most of its institutions are aid centres without a vet.

Odisha had 2,882 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 2,652 in 2021, and 382 of its 1,480 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 25.8 percent, exactly the national rate. Of its 4,094 government institutions only 62 are veterinary hospitals and polyclinics and 479 dispensaries; the other 3,553 are aid centres, the most of any state after Uttar Pradesh. The February 2025 reply records no operational mobile veterinary unit in Odisha, against 536 in Rajasthan and 340 in Andhra Pradesh. With 1,81,70,309 livestock in the 2019 census, the state has 6,305 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106 and 6.5 vets per lakh people against 6.3, roughly the national average on both, and three recognised colleges with 260 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 Odisha, so there is no private clinic layer here for Bhubaneswar or Cuttack; what a consultation or surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: a Rs 500 licence with insurance, a 2020 shop register, and an LPG crematorium

Bhubaneswar wrote one of the strictest dog bye-laws in India in 2023 and opened a pet crematorium in 2026.

Bhubaneswar's Registration and Proper Control of Dogs Bye-Laws, 2023 require every dog over four months to be registered each year for Rs 500, renewed for Rs 250 within a month of expiry or Rs 350 after, against a rabies vaccination certificate, a sterilisation certificate and 'a certificate of insurance to dog covering third party', with a fine of up to Rs 10,000 and up to Rs 200 a day for a continuing breach; people keeping stray dogs are exempt from the fee. The copy read is headed 'A Draft Bye-Law', and Odisha Bytes reported in April 2023 that the corporation had announced it with the Rs 500 fee payable at the BMC office; no count of licences issued has been published, and the state as a whole had about 64,000 registered pet dogs in August 2025. Insurance and a sterilisation certificate as conditions of a licence make it the most demanding rule in this series; Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals elsewhere, and its guide to pets in apartments in India reads the guideline residents' associations work under. Odisha's Directorate of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services made registration with the State Animal Welfare Board mandatory for pet shops, dog breeders and veterinary centres by notifications of 23 July 2020 Directorate of Animal Husbandry…, one of the few states to act on the 2017 and 2018 Rules before the AWBI's circular of December 2023 recorded that none but Maharashtra had reported; Odisha has still published no count. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause.

Native breeds and end of life: no breed, and Palasuni

No dog breed named for Odisha is on ICAR's register of six Indian breeds or the standard list, and the dog most of the state shares a road with is the Indian pariah dog; Bonbeno's report on the register carries the six. Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation opened an LPG small animal crematorium at Palasuni in 2026 at a cost of Rs 1,19,43,592, Rs 77,11,792 for construction and Rs 42,31,800 for machinery; its fee and capacity had not been published, and Bonbeno's cremation report will add it as a row when they are. Its guide to when your pet dies in India covers the steps.

What an Odisha pet owner can do with these numbers

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

1. Register your dog in Bhubaneswar and keep the insurance and vaccination papers together. Rs 500 a year, with a fine of up to Rs 10,000.
2. Vaccinate against rabies every year and treat every bite as urgent. The state counted 2,59,107 bites in 2023, and the Bolangir deaths followed a rabid dog's bites.
3. Report an injured or aggressive dog on 1962. The state named it for injured strays in August 2025.
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. Ask your ward for its feeding zone, and keep meat waste off the road. Both are state policy since August 2025.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder registered with the State Animal Welfare Board. Registration has been mandatory since July 2020.
7. Ask the corporation for Palasuni's fee before you need it. It is not published.

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 state dog count is a 2019 census and a minister's round number. They differ by more than ten lakh, neither has a published method, and the 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 8 November 2026.
• The state's bite series and the IDSP's are different instruments. They agree for 2022 and not after; no document read explains why. The dataset carries both and computes nothing across them.
• The state's 2024 figure covers ten months, so it is not a full-year comparison with the IDSP's.
• No district bite figures and no state death count were found; the named deaths are the ones the press reported.
• The statewide sterilisation figure is for 2022-23 only. No later state total, ABC budget or count of centres was found; the state's scheme document is a scanned PDF that could not be read.
• The Bhubaneswar bye-law copy read is headed 'draft', though the corporation announced it; its gazette notification was not found.
• No private clinic layer, no licence count, no shop count and no crematorium fee 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 minister's figure and policy from Odisha Bytes and OdishaTV of 23 August 2025 OdishaTV, 'Over 7 lakh stray dogs…; the Bhubaneswar census from Odisha Bytes of 13 October 2025 and Sambad English of 14 October 2025 Sambad English, 'Vaccination.
2. The bite figures are from OrissaPOST and Odisha Bytes of 4 December 2024 reporting the assembly reply, Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025, OdishaTV OdishaTV, 'Rabid dog rampage in Odisha's… OdishaTV, 'Elderly woman mauled to death…, The Asian Age and the WHO India page.
3. The programme and court figures are from Sambad English of 20 August 2025, Odisha Bytes of 9 January 2024, LiveLaw LiveLaw, Orissa High Court, OmmCom News, Bar and Bench, 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 figures are from the BMC bye-law, Odisha Bytes, OdishaTV and the Directorate's SAWB page Directorate of Animal Husbandry…, the Pet Shop Rules, the AWBI circular and OrissaPOST of 1 September 2026. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 8 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results for 'stray dogs in odisha' and 'stray dogs in bhubaneswar'.