In the heart of India’s capital New Delhi, a most unusual democratic contest has captured the public imagination, drawing thousands of engaged voters and passionate campaigners all competing to crown the city’s officially “chonkiest” — or most generously proportioned — dog.
What began as a throwaway lighthearted joke has evolved into a full-fledged online knockout tournament, hosted by Fat Dogs of Delhi, an Instagram page created specifically to celebrate the capital’s plus-sized canines. The project launched when the page put out a public call for nominations of beloved bulky neighborhood dogs, and the response quickly outgrew all expectations.
The anonymous Delhi-based creator behind the Instagram account, who spoke to the BBC on condition of privacy, shared that the idea was inspired by similar knockout style competitions run by users on the platform X. “Why not do it as a fun little thing for people to bond over?” she explained. The page accepted the first 64 nominations, and the entries came with names as playful and distinctive as the dogs themselves: Dahi Bhalli, named for a popular tangy North Indian street snack; Mahakutteshwar, a whimsical twist on Hindu temple deity names that incorporates the Hindi word for dog, kutta; and crowd favorites like Googoo, Rambabu, and the bold Kutta Singh.
Voting kicked off on September 24, structured as a single-elimination tournament. The 64 original candidates were split into 32 head-to-head matchups, with the top vote-getter from each pair advancing to the next round and the remaining contestants eliminated. After multiple rounds of intense online voting, just eight finalists remained ahead of the grand final scheduled for Wednesday.
Supporters of competing pups have thrown themselves fully into the campaign spirit, creating everything from elaborate custom posters and endorsement reels to viral memes to rally votes for their chosen candidates. Many have reached out to friends, family and even strangers online to drum up support, turning a small social media project into a viral cross-country movement.
Most of the competing dogs are not individually owned pets; they are beloved community strays, permanent neighborhood fixtures that survive on Delhi’s streets, cared for by loose networks of local residents, shopkeepers and laborers who feed them, name them, and monitor their health. Tragically, two contestants passed away over the course of the tournament, prompting an outpouring of public tributes from followers who had followed and voted for them.
For the final round, organizers are adding an in-person voting option, with volunteer-staffed ballot boxes set up at three locations across Delhi to complement the existing online voting. Among the final contenders is Googoo, a 46-kilogram mixed-breed currently housed at a local animal care center, where he is ironically on a regulated weight loss program with regular medical checkups. The teen who nominated Googoo told Indian Express he first encountered the dog in a local park in 2021, when Googoo was less than half his current size. Googoo’s loyal fans have already declared him the “GOAT” — greatest of all time — of Delhi’s fat dogs.
The unprecedented scale of public interest has caught the organizer completely off guard. “I did not expect it to blow up to this extent for sure,” she told the BBC. “I love the sense of community that we have right now.” Since the contest launched, the Fat Dogs of Delhi account has gained tens of thousands of new followers, and excitement has spread far beyond New Delhi’s city limits, with supporters from as far away as the southern state of Kerala and the eastern city of Kolkata picking favorites and campaigning for them.
Beyond the lighthearted fun, organizers are now channeling the contest’s unexpected viral popularity to support a much more serious cause: improving welfare for Delhi’s stray animal population. The page has begun highlighting local animal welfare organizations and individual activists seeking donations for their work, turning the viral moment into tangible support for community dogs across the region.
The contest comes amid a long-running, serious public debate over stray dog management in India’s capital. Municipal data estimates Delhi’s stray dog population at roughly 1 million, with surrounding suburban areas including Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurugram also reporting rapid population growth in recent years. In many neighborhoods, strays are treated as beloved community pets, cared for by local residents. But in other areas, growing stray populations have sparked public fear, fueled by reports of dog bites, aggressive packs and ongoing rabies risks.
Last year, India’s Supreme Court ordered the relocation of all strays in Delhi and its surrounding suburbs to dedicated animal shelters, responding to growing public concern over the “menace of dog bites leading to rabies” — a ruling that sparked widespread outrage among animal lovers and welfare activists. The order was later revised to allow sterilized, vaccinated dogs to be returned to their original neighborhoods.
Many campaign participants say that the playful contest has reframed public conversation around Delhi’s community dogs, highlighting the warm, affectionate bonds between residents and the strays that share their neighborhoods. After weeks of passionate campaigning and thousands of votes cast across online and in-person polls, Delhi will soon name its champion: the official winner of the title of Delhi’s chonkiest dog.