Ernakulam district panchayat has announced plans to speed up sterilisation of stray dogs under the Animal Birth Control programme. The move comes as Kerala continues to record some of the highest stray dog bite numbers in the country, with the state’s ABC rollout widely criticised for falling well short of what is needed.
The broader picture behind this announcement is not encouraging. A recent attempt to scale up sterilisation through portable ABC units across seven districts, including Ernakulam, collapsed after the two crore rupees allocated for the project lapsed without being used. The Animal Husbandry Department attributed this to “shortcomings in the project’s execution.” The money was gone, the dogs were not sterilised, and the problem continued.
What the Numbers Look Like
Kerala’s stray dog numbers have been rising steadily for years. A 2019-20 Animal Husbandry Department survey counted around 7 lakh stray dogs across the state. That figure is projected to have crossed 9 lakh by 2025.
Dog bite cases have followed the same curve. In 2021, 2.21 lakh people were bitten. By 2024, that number had risen to 3.17 lakh. Between 2021 and 2025, a total of 1.72 million people were bitten and 136 died of rabies.
Between November 2024 and September 2025, the ABC programme sterilised 52,995 dogs statewide. Kollam led with 15,832. Kasaragod had 329. The numbers suggest a programme that is running, but nowhere near the scale required to make a dent in a population approaching 9 lakh.
Why It Has Been So Hard
Mobile ABC units were introduced specifically because permanent centres kept running into problems: land acquisition disputes, infrastructure gaps, and local opposition to having a sterilisation facility nearby. The first portable unit only opened in Nedumangad Municipality in October 2025, and the programme is still in its pilot phase a year later.
Local bodies going into election mode created further disruption. Shelters, which the Supreme Court directed should be established to house stray dogs, have not materialised. No meaningful shelter infrastructure exists at the district level in most of Kerala.
What Ernakulam’s Push Means
Ernakulam’s decision to accelerate sterilisation is a step in the right direction. Whether it translates into a meaningfully larger number of dogs sterilised will depend on whether the district can line up functional ABC centres, sufficient veterinary staff, and post-operative care that keeps dogs off the street for the required 45 days after surgery before they are returned.
The pattern in Kerala has been repeated often enough to be familiar: an announcement of urgency, followed by a funding mechanism that does not deploy, followed by an acknowledgement that targets were missed. Ernakulam’s announcement is notable, but it will be measured by what gets done.
October 23, 2026
