Bhubaneswar: Dog bite cases have gone up in the past three months in the city with Capital Hospital recording 120 cases daily, up from around 70-80 before May, authorities said. Sources said stray dogs are entering residences and gated apartments looking for food and shelter. In the process, they are attacking people, mostly elderly and children. People are also being chased by stray dogs on the streets, they said.
“We are receiving around 120 dog bite cases daily. Between June and Sept, we receive comparatively more cases, but this time it is considerably higher than previous years,” said superintendent of Capital Hospital, Dilip Panda.
Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said it will resume its animal birth control (ABC) programme, which has been on hold since June 1. “The dog sterilisation programme was on till May end. It will be resumed very soon. We have asked for two veterinary doctors to carry out the operations. We have the required infrastructure ready,” said BMC commissioner Rajesh Patil. In Jan, Orissa high court disposed of a case pertaining to the ABC programme lifting the stay on sterilisation of stray dogs across the state. For five months prior to Jan, BMC was not able to operate on stray dogs. Dog sterilisations had resumed in Feb and discontinued in June.
BMC officials said they have 240 kennels at the new dog sterilisation facility at Mancheswar and 120 kennels at Saheed Nagar. “The private party engaged to take up sterilisations has discontinued the work due to some technical issues,” said a BMC officer. Stray dogs are caught using nets. They are released after post-operative care at the same areas where they were caught.
Animal rights activist Biswajit Pradhan moved HC making govt a party and alleging mismanagement in birth control surgeries in state because of the lack of a state monitoring and implementation committee.

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