In 1995, the then Corporation Commissioner S. Abul Hassan agreed to let BCI carry out an Animal Birth Control-Anti-Rabies (ABC-AR) programme in South Madras with the rider that the Commissioner would personally monitor the process and results. In 1995, even as BCI started the ABC-AR programme in South Chennai, street dogs in other parts of the city were still caught and killed. Soon, as the ABC-AR method started yielding visible results, the corporation agreed to relinquish its catch-and-kill policy and implement ABC-AR throughout the city, starting September 1996, marking the beginning of the ABC-AR programme in India. The number of human deaths in Chennai due to rabies dropped from 120 in 1996 to zero in 2007 and in 2010 the Corporation of Chennai declared Chennai to be rabies-free. However, there were a few deaths after the Chennai Corporation limits were greatly increased a few years later owing to less rigorous implementation of the ABC-AR programme in the suburbs and not abiding by the PCA Act (1960) and the Dog Rule Act (2001).