Bengal’s Stray Dog Feeding Rules Now Come With an ID Card

On Wednesday, 16 September, Agnimitra Paul, West Bengal’s minister for urban development and municipal affairs, visited Rabindra Sarobar and barred dogs, and food, from the lake grounds. Dog droppings were dirtying the place, she said. “We are not against dogs, but the Sarobar must not be soiled.”

A month later, her department asked towns across the state to mark out designated spots where people could feed street dogs. The memo setting out the new Bengal stray dog feeding rules went to municipal corporations, municipalities and notified area authorities and was reported on 16 October. If you feed dogs anywhere in Bengal, it changes where you feed, when you feed, and whether you carry an ID card while you do it.

Bengal stray dog feeding rules in one minute

• Feed only at your ward’s designated spot. Spots have to stay clear of children’s play areas, walking routes and crowded places, and can’t block a road, a footpath, a gate, or the front of a house or shop.
• Feed before 7 am or after 7 pm. Each slot runs at least two hours, and your municipality fixes the exact times.
• Carry your card. Councils will draw up a list of caregivers and issue each of them an ID.
• Serve on disposable plates or newspaper, and put them in a bin once the dogs are done.
• Feeding outside the spot can be penalised under municipal solid-waste law. No fine amount has been announced.
• Nobody may stop, harass or obstruct a feeder who follows these rules, and in a dispute you can ask the police for help.

Councils may also build small cement platforms for food and water, and every council has to publish its locations and timings and then report back to the department on what it has done.

Most of this has been on paper since 2024

On 25 November 2024 the same department sent every town except Kolkata a standard operating procedure for feeding community dogs, after the Calcutta High Court asked for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s own system, running since May 2024, to be copied across the state. That SOP already had the ward spots, the 7 am and 7 pm windows, the plates-in-the-bin rule and the ban on harassing feeders. It even named the law a feeder outside the spot could be booked under, section 272 of the West Bengal Municipal Act, 1993, along with the waste-dumping clauses of the Howrah and state municipal corporation acts.

The new part is the system being built around feeding: the caregiver register and its ID cards, the platforms, a role for the police in disputes, and a progress report from every council to the department. Cats and other street animals are named alongside dogs this time, where the 2024 SOP was written for community dogs alone.

What Bengal’s SOP tells you to put in the bowl

The 2024 SOP also gives feeders a menu. Soft rice, chapati and boiled potato with a little oil or ghee, cooked meat offcuts, a pinch of turmeric, or packaged dog food soaked or mixed into rice. It rules out chocolate, caffeine, dairy, sweet snacks containing xylitol, onion and garlic, alcohol, and grapes, cherries and raisins. Our guide on what to feed street dogs has the longer list, including what never to give.

How a lake ban turned into a feeding plan

The Sarobar order drew a reply within two days. Actor Sreelekha Mitra wrote a long Facebook post asking where the city’s dogs and cats were supposed to live if they were cleared off the streets, the parks and the footpaths. “Will only the animal called man be left on this earth?” she wrote (translated from Bengali).

By the end of September, Paul had begun naming the areas where feeding spots would be set up, with Kolkata, Howrah, Salt Lake, Chandannagar and several other towns on the list, and she said the plan had come out of proposals from Mitra and a group of animal welfare organisations. Each spot would get a signboard, its list would go to the local police station, and municipalities would vaccinate the dogs fed there against rabies. The memo, as reported, says nothing about the rabies shots.

Behind all of it sits the Supreme Court’s order of 22 August 2025, which told every municipality in India to create feeding spaces in each ward, put up signboards and stop feeding on the streets. What the law already protects, in Bengal and everywhere else, is in our round-up of animal laws in India.

Where we stand

Having regular feeding spots can help. When street dogs eat at known locations, local caregivers can keep track of them more easily and arrange sterilisation and vaccination. But a designated spot works only if dogs can get there without being chased away and the people who care for them can continue feeding them without harassment. An ID card turns “the woman who feeds dogs” into a registered caregiver, and that matters the next time a neighbour calls the police on her.

Our concern is the sequence of events. The penalties are already spelled out, but the feeding spots still need to be identified, and Paul has given no date for when they will be. Fine a feeder before her ward has a spot, and the rule punishes the person doing the council’s job.

We made the same case about the Supreme Court verdict, that cities should count the dogs and fund the basics first and enforce after.

If you feed dogs in Bengal

1. Ask your ward office or municipality where your ward’s spot is and what the timings are.
2. Ask how to get on the caregiver list and get your card.
3. Until a spot is marked, feed early or late, away from gates and play areas, and clear up after.
4. If someone harasses you while you follow the rules, put the complaint in writing and mention the memo.

Kolkata’s animal helplines and shelters are on our Kolkata adoption page.

Still unclear

• Whether the Kolkata Municipal Corporation follows this memo or keeps its own SOP from May 2024.
• Fine amounts. None have been announced.
• The memo’s full text. We will update this post when it is public.

If you’re looking to adopt in Kolkata, most of the animals waiting there right now are cats and kittens. See who is up for adoption in Kolkata.

We track court and state orders on street dogs in Woofs & Words. The last issue covered Goa’s beach dog plan and the Bombay High Court’s 22 October deadline.