Stray dogs in Haryana, 2026: 4,64,578 counted in 2019, 11,04,887 dog bites in a decade by the state's own RTI reply, 2.14 lakh in eighteen months as the state told its High Court against 78,527 in two years in the national table, the Rs 10,000-a-tooth-mark ruling and the DAYALU-II scheme that pays it, Gurugram's dogs put at 7,000, 50,000 and 1.5 lakh, a Rs 700 surgery, shelters for 5,000 dogs ordered, and 88 pet shops on nobody's register

Stray dogs in Haryana: the state's numbers on one page

Haryana is the one state in this series that has priced a dog bite in law. Sixteen rows, from fifteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. The High Court's 2023 formula makes a dog bite in Haryana worth at least Rs 10,000 a tooth mark, payable first by the state, and the state's own health department counted 11,04,887 bites in a decade. The rest of this report is about a state that has made a dog bite a liability on its books and still does not publish how many it pays.

How many stray dogs Haryana has: 4.65 lakh in the census, and a Gurugram nobody has counted

Haryana's census count rose while India's fell, and its richest city's estimates differ twentyfold.

Haryana had 4,64,578 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 10 percent more than the 4,22,474 of 2012, in the same years India's count fell 10.7 percent, and 16.2 dogs for every 1,000 people against the national 11.5 National Commission on Population, one of the highest rates among the larger states after Odisha, Karnataka and Rajasthan; in 2012 14.0 percent were counted in urban areas and the rest rural, and the 2019 census counted 1,27,917 stray cattle. The health department gave the same two census figures to an RTI applicant in 2023. Gurugram's estimates run from 'over 7,000 stray dogs in the city' by the corporation's records in September 2024 through 'about 50,000' by 2024 data to 'nearly 1,50,000' by a senior corporation official in March 2023; Faridabad is put at 30,447 by the same 2024 data. None of the three Gurugram figures comes with a method, and a city that cannot place its dog population within a factor of twenty cannot measure its sterilisation coverage. No Haryana city has published a survey of the kind Bengaluru, Mumbai or Bhubaneswar has. Bonbeno's street dog report explains how a census and an estimate diverge.

Dog bites and rabies: 11 lakh bites in a decade, 2.14 lakh in eighteen months, and a national table that sees a third

Haryana's own counts and the national table are not measuring the same thing, and the state's are the larger.

The health department told an RTI applicant of 11,04,887 dog bites in 18 districts over 2012 to 2022, Ambala the highest at 1,54,326, then Jind at 1,43,766 and Rohtak at 1,21,603; about 14.60 lakh people were given the anti-rabies vaccine in the same years, and Rewari, Yamunanagar, Nuh and Palwal gave no data at all. In 2024 the state told the Punjab and Haryana High Court of 2.14 lakh dog bites in 18 months of 2022 and 2023: Ambala 49,514, Rohtak 25,467, Panipat 22,331, Jind 16,447, Jhajjar 13,947 and Faridabad 12,939. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Haryana 35,837 bites in 2022, 42,690 in 2023, 60,417 in 2024 and 7,787 in January 2025, and no suspected rabies death in any year; the state's eighteen months are 2.7 times the table's two full years. On the IDSP figure Haryana recorded 197.6 bites per lakh people in 2024, below the national 265.7; on the state's figure it would be well above it. Gurugram district alone reported more than 9,000 people bitten in 2022 and was seeing 'around 3,000 dog bite cases per month' at government facilities by September 2024. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

Rabies and the deaths: zero in the table, a boy in Karnal

No Haryana source read gives a rabies death count, and the IDSP's zero for three years is the only figure in print; the ICMR estimates 5,726 rabies deaths a year in India against the 54 the national table recorded in 2024. Stray dogs killed a ten-year-old boy, Aditya, retrieving a kite on Basant Panchami in Shekhpura Khalsa village, Karnal district, in February 2025, and a dog that had mauled an eight-year-old girl in Gurugram's Sector 23 was shot dead four days later in January 2024, the second an offence of its own.

The compensation: Rs 10,000 a tooth mark, Rs 20,000 per 0.2 cm, and a scheme that pays it

The Punjab and Haryana High Court turned dog bites into a quantified state liability in 2023, and Haryana wrote it into a scheme two years later.

On 18 August 2023 Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj of the Punjab and Haryana High Court disposed of 193 petitions led by Rajwinder Kaur v. State of Haryana, CWP-22904-2016, and fixed 'a minimum compensation of Rs.10,000 per tooth mark' for a dog bite and, 'where the flesh has been pulled off the skin', a minimum of Rs 20,000 per 0.2 cm of wound, holding that 'the State shall be primarily responsible to pay compensation' and may recover it from the agency or person at fault Verdictum, '10K Per Teeth Mark. The judgment set up district animal attack accident compensation committees chaired by the Deputy Commissioner, with the Superintendent or Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic), the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, the District Transport Officer, a Chief Medical Officer's representative and, by ThePrint's account, the Deputy Director of Animal Husbandry, to clear a claim within four months; ThePrint reported Rs 5 lakh to the legal heirs for a death and Rs 2 lakh for permanent incapacity, while LiveLaw reported death and disability as 'prescribed in the respective State Policies'. The ruling binds Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh.

DAYALU-II: the scheme that pays it, and who it leaves out

Haryana first covered dog bites in its DAYALU scheme of November 2023, for death or disability only, at Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh by age, and then in September 2025 notified DAYALU-II, which pays '₹10,000 will be provided for each teeth mark' and Rs 20,000 for every 0.2 cm of torn wound, Rs 10,000 for a minor injury and Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh for a death or 70 percent disability by age, to families on the Parivar Pehchan Patra with 'an annual family income of less than ₹1.8 lakh'; claims are filed online within 90 days, a district committee under the Deputy Commissioner decides within 120 days, and the Haryana Parivar Suraksha Nyas pays within six weeks and recovers the money from the department, agency or person responsible. The scheme therefore narrows the court's formula to poorer families; a victim outside the income limit is left with the High Court's committee route. No figure for what has actually been paid to dog bite victims under either route could be found published. Elsewhere in this series, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have no such rule, Karnataka pays Rs 5,000 for a bite and Rs 5 lakh for a death and the Orissa High Court awarded Rs 10 lakh against Puri; Haryana's per-tooth-mark rule is the only one that scales with the wound.

The Animal Birth Control programme and the orders: 1.37 lakh dogs in eight years, Rs 700 in Gurugram, and shelters for 5,000

Haryana sterilises slowly, cheaply and, in Gurugram, with gaps between contracts.

The health department's RTI reply counted 1,37,449 stray dogs sterilised in 11 districts from 2014 to 2022, about 17,000 a year; the article's cost for that work, Rs 17,46,626, works out to Rs 13 a dog and is printed here only to say it cannot be right. In August 2025 the Urban Local Bodies Minister, Vipul Goel, said 'nearly 30,000 dogs have been sterilised over the past year-and-a-half'. Gurugram sterilised 42,228 dogs from 2014 to 2022 for Rs 2.87 crore, about Rs 680 a dog; its programme paused in 2025 while the corporation re-tendered, and on 28 November 2025 it issued work orders for a two-year programme from 29 November 2025 to 28 November 2027 at Rs 700 per sterilisation and Rs 250 per vaccination, to Maa Baglamukhi Sewa Samiti of Jabalpur across all four zones. Rs 700 is less than half the Animal Welfare Board's Rs 1,650 benchmark that Bhubaneswar pays, and below the Centre's Rs 800. Faridabad's corporation runs a centre with People for Animals that had sterilised over 3,500 dogs since 2024 and microchips each to record where it was caught and released. At the 70 percent coverage the Centre's advisory sets, Haryana's census needs about 3.25 lakh dogs sterilised, eleven years at the minister's rate.

What the state ordered, and what the Supreme Court said of it

On 28 November 2025 Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi ordered immediate implementation of the Supreme Court's orders of 11 August, 22 August and 7 November 2025: large shelters with CCTV, medical facilities and trained staff, each able to hold 'at least 5,000 dogs'; sterilisation, vaccination and tagging under the ABC Rules with digital records; 24x7 helplines in every district and local body for bites, rescues and abandonment; feeding zones in every ward; Deputy Commissioners to identify schools, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands, depots and stations, fence them and name a nodal officer in each; and hospitals to stock anti-rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin. The 11 August 2025 order, directed at Delhi-NCR, had told Gurugram and Faridabad to catch, sterilise and shelter dogs permanently; the 22 August order restored release after sterilisation for healthy dogs nationally; the 7 November order covered institutional premises; and on 19 May 2026 the Court upheld its directions. At the hearing of 28 January 2026 Justice Sandeep Mehta said Haryana's affidavit was 'totally silent on what has been done to remove dogs from institutions', and the amicus said that 'in a large number of area, there has been no implementation of ABC Rules'. The Animal Welfare Board released no ABC grant to any state in the four years to 2024-25.

Veterinary care: 2,571 vets, 2,741 livestock each, and five colleges

Haryana's veterinary network is among the best staffed in north India for its herd.

Haryana had 2,571 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 2,162 in 2021, and 216 of its 1,126 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 19.2 percent against 25.8 percent for India. Its 2,956 government institutions are 1,050 hospitals and polyclinics, 1,815 dispensaries and 91 aid centres, and its 70 operational mobile veterinary units cover 1.0 per lakh livestock. With 70,46,091 livestock in the 2019 census, the state has 2,741 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, the best ratio of any large state after Kerala and Maharashtra, 2,384 per institution against 7,906, and 8.4 vets per lakh people against 6.3; its five recognised colleges have 440 approved seats. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks every state on the same arithmetic. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad), and Delhi's serves Gurugram and Faridabad; what a consultation or surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: a Rs 500 Gurugram licence, 88 unregistered shops, and a dog crematorium in Faridabad

Haryana's pet rules are city by city, and the one state-level count of its pet trade came from an NGO.

Gurugram made pet dog registration mandatory in October 2018 with an initial fee of Rs 500, and 12 licences had been issued at the time; by February 2024 'only 2,000 of the expected 10,000 pet dogs have been registered'. No Faridabad fee, portal or count could be read. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist, and its guide to pets in apartments in India reads the guideline residents' associations, of which Gurugram has hundreds, work under. PETA India's letter of 14 May 2020 to every state's animal husbandry department annexed a 'List of illegal pet stores in the cities of Haryana (As on 31st March 2020)' numbering 88 shops, Ambala Sadar 11, Faridabad 10, Gurgaon 10, Ambala 9, Rohtak 7, Panipat 6, Sonipat 6 and the rest across nine more towns, compiled from the internet and, PETA said, not exhaustive. The Rules require a State Board certificate for every such shop and every breeder, and the Board's circular of December 2023 recorded that no state had provided its count. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries that letter and the Rules clause by clause.

Native breeds and end of life: none, and Faridabad

No dog breed named for Haryana is on ICAR's register of six Indian breeds or the standard list, and the dog most of the state shares a road with is the Indian pariah dog; Bonbeno's report on the register carries the six. Faridabad Municipal Corporation built a dedicated dog crematorium under its health department, reported in February 2026 as 'expected to be operational soon'; its fee and capacity were not published, and Bonbeno's cremation report, which already carries Faridabad's two earlier facilities and Delhi's, is the place to check. Its guide to when your pet dies in India covers the steps.

What a Haryana pet owner can do with these numbers

Seven things that follow from the record, in the order an owner meets them.

1. Register your dog in Gurugram and keep its vaccination card. Rs 500; a pet's bite is also a claim the owner answers for under DAYALU-II.
2. After a bite, photograph the wound and keep the hospital papers. Compensation is Rs 10,000 a tooth mark and Rs 20,000 per 0.2 cm of torn flesh.
3. File within 90 days. DAYALU-II claims are online and the district committee decides within 120 days.
4. Report the dog on your local body's 24x7 helpline. Every district and local body was ordered to run one in November 2025.
5. Know which order applies to your building. Institutional premises are fenced and cleared to shelters; a residential road gets its sterilised dogs back under rule 11(19).
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that can show its State Board certificate. 88 were listed as unregistered in 2020.
7. Ask Faridabad's corporation for its crematorium fee before you need it. It had not been published.

What this data does not measure

Each figure here was produced by a different office for a different purpose, and the gaps are specific.

• The dog count is a 2019 census and city estimates without a method; Gurugram's run from 7,000 to 1.5 lakh. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 8 November 2026.
• The three bite series are different instruments. The RTI decade count misses four districts entirely; the High Court figure is read from a news report of the state's submission, not the affidavit; the IDSP table counts what reporting facilities send up. The dataset computes nothing across them.
• No state source gives rabies deaths; the IDSP's three zeros are the only figure.
• The Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh in the High Court's judgment are ThePrint's reading; LiveLaw read the same judgment as leaving death and disability to state policy. Both are printed.
• No figure for compensation actually paid under the High Court formula or DAYALU-II was found.
• The state's 2014 to 2022 sterilisation cost of Rs 17,46,626 is implausible at about Rs 13 a dog and is not used.
• PETA's 88 shops were compiled from the internet in 2020, and no Haryana register has replaced the list. No private clinic layer for Gurugram or Faridabad exists here, and pet spending per household is not here because the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey's unit-level data had not been obtained.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the state rows are the same rows Bonbeno's national reports computed from the parliamentary annexes.

1. The census figures are from the Rajya Sabha statement of 6 August 2025 and Table 79 of the 19th Livestock Census, with per-1,000 rates from the National Commission on Population's projections; the city estimates from MedBound Times, The Tribune and News Arena India.
2. The bite figures are from The Tribune of 26 February 2023, News Arena India of 13 August 2025, Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025, The Tribune The Tribune, 'Stray dog that mauled… and the WHO India page.
3. The compensation figures are from LiveLaw, Verdictum and ThePrint on the High Court's judgment of 18 August 2023 Verdictum, '10K Per Teeth Mark ThePrint, 'Rs 10,000 per tooth mark, The Tribune on DAYALU and 5 Dariya News on DAYALU-II.
4. The programme and order figures are from The Tribune, WION, Asianet Newsable, LiveLaw and Verdictum on the Supreme Court hearing of 28 January 2026 Verdictum, 'Stray dogs, All India Radio, the Supreme Court's orders Supreme Court of India, News On AIR, the ABC Rules, the Lok Sabha reply of 2 December 2025 and PIB; the veterinary figures from the Lok Sabha replies Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the Rajya Sabha annexure and the VCI list.
5. The pet figures are from Millennium Post, The Tribune, PETA India's letter, the Pet Shop Rules, the AWBI circular and Drishti IAS. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 8 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results for 'stray dogs in gurgaon'; the run for the focus keyword returned no box.