IDs, microchips and feeders’ rights: How Faridabad is quietly solving India’s stray dog crisis

A system driven by the Municipal Corporation of Faridabad (MCF), guided by experts and responsive to residents, has helped the city significantly reduce conflicts over stray dogs in the past three years.

The MCF runs a joint committee consisting of its officers, a health department representative and an NGO member that inspects every stray dog-related complaint, designates feeding points and intervenes to resolve disputes between residents, as reported by TOI.

Backing this effort is an Animal Birth Control (ABC) centre, run by NGO People for Animals (PFA) and supervised by MCF. The centre records each step of sterilisation and microchips dogs so they can be tracked once released into their community. The chip provides a digital ID, logging when and where the animal was picked up, treated and released, said officials.


The ABC centre, which began operations on 20 May last year, has sterilised and vaccinated more than 3,500 dogs and returned them to their 'home' locations, a crucial factor in ensuring the programme’s success. Relocating dogs to unfamiliar areas often triggers conflicts with native packs, leading to aggression, as per TOI.

A senior MCF official was quoted by TOI as saying that the transparency of the programme has attracted interest from veterinary colleges. “Since the work is transparent and fair, students are coming here to observe and learn how the operations are managed,” the official said.

MCF Commissioner Dhirendra Khadgata told TOI that the objective of the ABC programme is to control the stray dog population by scaling up sterilisation centres and reducing reproduction to replacement levels, eventually decreasing the overall number of strays. Two additional ABC centres are already in the pipeline.

Vrinda Sharma of PFA, who heads the programme in Faridabad, emphasised that sterilisation combined with vaccination is the only legal and humane solution for community dog issues, as reiterated by Supreme Court guidelines and cited by TOI. She added that feeders play a key role in the programme’s success.

“Feeders help identify and safely catch dogs. Since dogs are familiar with them, the process becomes easier. Feeding is a constitutional right. No one should prevent people from feeding community dogs,” Sharma was quoted as saying by TOI.

The collaboration between MCF and PFA came after earlier tenders to run the ABC programme failed. An official told TOI that many NGOs lacked the infrastructure, expertise or genuine commitment to animal welfare.

“Some companies participating in the tenders were found to lack genuine commitment to animal welfare, which is what is needed,” the official added.

According to district animal husbandry data from 2024, Faridabad had just over 30,000 stray dogs that year. Given these figures, the ABC programme still has considerable ground to cover before achieving replacement levels.

However, Friday’s Supreme Court ruling in favour of humane dog population control is expected to give the programme the nudge it needs by accelerating the establishment of more centres, as reported by TOI.

Inputs from TOI