Dogs on the loose, budgets on a leash

The Supreme Court’s decision to round up stray dogs in Delhi NCR is likely to stretch the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to its limits — and years of chronic underspending may be a big reason why.

In 2021–22, MCD spent Rs 5.9 crore on stray dogs, of which Rs 5 crore went towards sterilisation and just Rs 70 lakh towards building sterilisation centres. A Delhi Assembly panel estimated the stray dog population at 8 lakh in 2019, up from 5.6 lakh in the MCD’s last census in 2009.

Comparable trends are visible in other metros. Bengaluru’s Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) spent Rs 9.4 crore tackling stray dogs in FY22, while Mumbai’s BMC spent Rs 11.2 crore in the same year.

The low spending comes even as dog bite cases—not all are due to stray dogs—have surged. In Delhi, reported cases jumped nearly fourfold from 6,691 in 2022 to 25,210 in 2024. In January 2025 alone, the city logged 3,196 cases. However, there may be more dog bite cases than the official figures suggest.

Between FY22 and FY24, Bengaluru and Mumbai together spent under Rs 40 crore each on street dogs, while Delhi budgeted Rs 45.8 crore. Yet Delhi’s spending has consistently fallen short of allocations. In FY21, MCD budgeted Rs 11.4 crore but spent just Rs 3.6 crore; in FY22, it spent a little over half of the Rs 9.2 crore allocation.

Delhi had budget to spend Rs 16,000 crore in FY23, while BMC's total budget was Rs 45,949 crore, whereas Bengaluru's budget was a little over Rs 10,000 crore.