Stray dogs in Rajasthan, 2026: 12.76 lakh counted in 2019 and rising while India's fell, 5.94 lakh dog bites in 2025-26 and 18.4 lakh in five years, 22 dog pounds for a state of 314 urban local bodies, the Jaipur programme that took human rabies to zero, a High Court that has sat on the question since August 2025, a Rs 1,000 pet licence with a Rs 5,000 fine, and 37 percent of government vet posts vacant

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

Rajasthan has three dog bite series that disagree by a factor of 600, a dog count from 2019, and a shelter count it gave the Supreme Court. Sixteen rows, from fourteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Rajasthan's dog bites grew from 88,259 to 5,93,999 in five financial years by the state's own programme figures, and the state answered the Supreme Court's question about shelters with the number 22. The rest of this report is about a desert state that proved, in Jaipur, that sterilisation ends rabies, and then did not build it anywhere else.

How many stray dogs Rajasthan has: 12.76 lakh in the census, rising while India's fell, and three cities with their own numbers

The census is seven years old and nothing newer covers the state. The cities that counted did so for a surgery programme.

Rajasthan had 12,75,596 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 10.8 percent more than the 11,51,015 of 2012, in the same seven years in which India's count fell 10.7 percent from 1.71 crore to 1.53 crore; that is the fourth-largest count of any state, 803 behind Maharashtra and behind Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, and 16.5 dogs for every 1,000 people against the national 11.5, the third-highest rate among states with more than a crore of people after Odisha and Karnataka. In 2012 only 9.5 percent of the state's stray dogs were counted in urban areas, against 14.6 percent for India, so nine in ten were rural. The same census counted 12,72,277 stray cattle in Rajasthan, more than any other state, which is why the High Court's case is about dogs and cows together. Bonbeno's street dog report explains why a household-enumerator census under-reads a dog population, and no later count exists: the 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 2 November 2026, and the survey committee the state said it would form after the Supreme Court's order of 7 November 2025 had reported nothing read by this report.

Jaipur: the programme India's ABC Rules were modelled on, and what it measured

Jaipur's street dog programme began in November 1994, and between then and December 2002 it caught, sterilised, vaccinated and released 24,986 dogs; surveys found 65 percent of the city's female dogs sterilised, the dog population down 28 percent, and the main hospital's human rabies cases in the programme area fallen to zero while they rose in the areas outside it. A second study from the same programme read the monthly animal-bite records of Jaipur's main government hospital from January 2003 to June 2011 against the street dogs' pregnancy records and found that bites peaked about ten weeks after the dogs' breeding peak and fell significantly over the period. The organisation that runs it, Help in Suffering, says the city's street dog population halved over the programme's first twenty years, that more than 70 percent of females have been sterilised every year since 2002, and that bites treated in medical facilities fell by two-thirds; those are the programme's own figures, and the two peer-reviewed ones above are the ones this report relies on. Jaipur's Help in Suffering is the reason India's Animal Birth Control Rules exist in the form they do, and Jaipur district still recorded 33,595 bites in 2025-26, with Sawai Man Singh Hospital alone treating more than 3,500 dog bites and 581 cat bites in the first seven months of 2026: a programme that holds coverage in one city does not hold it in a district of 70 lakh people.

Udaipur and Jodhpur: the two other cities with numbers

Udaipur's corporation put its street dogs at about 25,000 across 80 wards on 1 November 2025, with 15,243 sterilised to date by Animal Aid, a rate of 500 to 600 a month that the Commissioner called below target, and sterilisation complete in about 18 wards; at 600 a month the remaining dogs take about sixteen months, before the puppies born in that time are counted. Jodhpur's programme was studied by a Canadian team in 2005 to 2007: by 2007, 61.8 to 86.5 percent of free-roaming dogs in the surveyed areas were sterilised and vaccinated, the population fell significantly in three of the five areas, and the team's model predicted a 69 percent decline stabilising after 13 to 18 years at that coverage, and no decline at all below 40 percent. That 40 percent floor is the arithmetic the rest of the state is measured against, and no other Rajasthan city has published a coverage figure.

Dog bites and rabies: 5.94 lakh bites in 2025-26 by one series, 1.4 lakh by another, 900 by a third, and a death count last consolidated in 2018

Rajasthan is the state where the three ways of counting a dog bite diverge most. Each is a real number about something different.

Rajasthan recorded 5,93,999 dog bites in 2025-26 under the National Rabies Control Programme, up from 88,259 in 2021-22, 2,78,244 in 2022-23, 4,27,806 in 2023-24 and 4,60,309 in 2024-25, a rise of 573 percent and 18,42,617 people bitten over the five years; on the 2024 population projection of 8.19 crore the last year is about 725 bites per lakh people, one in 138. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Rajasthan 88,029 bites in 2022, 1,03,533 in 2023, 1,40,543 in 2024 and 15,062 in January 2025, with 0, 3 and 0 suspected rabies deaths, 171.6 per lakh people in 2024 against the national 265.7 and eleventh of all states; the two series agree almost exactly in their first year and then part, so that the programme figure for 2023-24 is three times the surveillance figure for 2024. Both come from the same health facilities; the programme series is the one the state's rabies plan is built on, and the surveillance series is the one Parliament is given. Then there is the third. A Right to Information reply reported in March 2026 counted 'more than 460' dog-bite cases in Rajasthan in 2024 and 'over 900' in 2025, with Jaipur at 307 and 633 and child victims in Jaipur at 45 and 65; the reports do not name the department that answered, the figures are a six-hundredth of the programme's, and whatever that reply counted (incidents registered with one agency is the likeliest reading), it is not people treated for a bite. A reader who meets the headline 'dog bite cases double in Rajasthan' is reading the third series. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

Deaths are the number Rajasthan does not have. The IDSP table records 0, 3 and 0 suspected rabies deaths for 2022 to 2024, and when the High Court took up the question on 2 August 2025 it noted that a 2018 state government report covering 2009-10 to 2018 had counted deaths caused by stray animals, 'more than 185 in the year 2018', and that the state had reported no consolidated figure since. The ICMR estimate for India is 5,726 rabies deaths a year against the 54 the surveillance table recorded in 2024; a state with 5.94 lakh bites and no death it can name is recording its treatment and not its outcome. Karnataka recorded 53 rabies deaths in 2025 and Kerala 33 by their own counts; Rajasthan's own count is not published.

The districts: Alwar first, Jaipur fifth, the border districts throughout

Alwar recorded the most dog bites in 2025-26 at 47,910, then Sri Ganganagar at 38,331, Bikaner at 35,796, Deeg at 34,087 and Jaipur at 33,595, with Dholpur, Beawar, Kota, Hanumangarh, Bhilwara, Churu and Ajmer each above 20,000. The capital, with the state's only thirty-year sterilisation programme, is fifth; Alwar, a district of 37 lakh people with no published programme, is first. The RTI series gave Jaipur 633 of the state's 900-odd cases in 2025, with Khairthal-Tijara at 55, Pali at 46, Kota at 45 and Bhilwara at 33, a distribution so different from the programme's that it confirms the two count different things.

The courts and the rules: a High Court case since August 2025, guidelines in three sizes, 22 dog pounds, and a pet registration order

Rajasthan wrote the first state guidelines after the Supreme Court's order and then told the same Court it had 22 pounds. The sequence matters.

On 29 June 2026 the High Court's Jaipur bench, in Civil Writ Petition 10620 of 2026, directed the state to report what every local municipal authority had done on the Supreme Court's directions, to create 'a separate wing' for removing stray dogs from and around public roads, to sterilise and vaccinate every captured dog under the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023, to show the anti-rabies vaccine stocked in every PHC, CHC, dispensary and hospital, to set up an accountability procedure for the responsible officials, and 'to take steps for getting all the pets, who may threaten human life including dogs, to be duly registered' within a time-frame and with fines, listing the matter for 3 August 2026 and recording that compliance 'is with regard to the entire State of Rajasthan and not limited to the particular city of Jaipur alone'. The Jodhpur bench's case of August 2025 had opened on the IDSP figures and on a report that the state had last consolidated deaths caused by stray animals in 2018, and its interim order of 11 August 2025 told every municipal body to run a special drive to remove stray dogs and animals from city roads with minimum harm, told the highway authorities to patrol, told each corporation to publish a complaint number, allowed FIRs against anyone obstructing the staff, and told Jodhpur's corporation to clear AIIMS and the district court as a priority.

What the state pays: Rs 200 to catch, Rs 1,450 to sterilise, and a 30-day report

The Local Self Government Department's guidelines of 26 August 2025, issued to every urban local body four days after the Supreme Court's order, fix the Animal Welfare Board's rates of 5 April 2022, Rs 200 for catching a dog and Rs 1,450 for its sterilisation, feeding and post-operative care, bar the sterilisation of any dog under six months and the capture of a nursing mother, require release to the same locality, designated feeding points in every ward each marked with a board, CCTV in every operating theatre and shelter, isolation of a rabid dog under veterinary supervision until it dies naturally, catching by net or hand, a monitoring committee with animal welfare members, and a compliance report from every body within 30 days Patrika, Jaipur, 'Rajasthan to establish…. Rs 1,650 a dog is Rs 850 more than the Rs 800 the Centre offers from 2025-26, and the Animal Welfare Board released no ABC grant to any state in the four years before that, so the money is the state's. At that rate, Udaipur's 15,243 sterilisations cost about Rs 2.5 crore and the census's 12.76 lakh dogs would cost about Rs 210 crore, which is the figure no Rajasthan budget has been read to contain. The November 2025 guidelines then set the Supreme Court's deadlines in weeks, two to clear stations, hospitals and markets and eight to finish, and in January 2026 the state told the Court what it had to put the dogs in: 22 pounds, 21 of them holding 100.

Veterinary care: 5,669 vets, the most institutions, mobile units and colleges of any state, and 37 percent of posts empty

Rajasthan has built more veterinary infrastructure than any state and staffs it worse than most.

Rajasthan had 5,669 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 4,447 in 2021, and 1,367 of its 3,691 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 37.0 percent against 25.8 percent for India, the third-highest vacancy among states with more than a crore of people after Gujarat and Bihar. Its 10,335 government institutions, 3,066 hospitals and polyclinics, 7,167 dispensaries and 102 aid centres, are the most of any state, twice Uttar Pradesh's 5,050; its 536 operational mobile veterinary units are the most of any state, 0.9 per lakh livestock against the central norm of 1.0; and its 11 recognised veterinary colleges with 1,000 approved seats are the most of any state, against Tamil Nadu's 7. With 5,68,00,945 livestock in the 2019 census, second only to Uttar Pradesh, the state has 10,020 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, 5,496 per institution against 7,906, and 6.9 vets per lakh people against 6.3, which is where Bonbeno's Vet Access Index places it: buildings ahead of the country, doctors behind it. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities, none of them Jaipur, Jodhpur or Udaipur, so this report has no private clinic layer for the state; what a consultation, a vaccination or a surgery costs anywhere in India is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: Jaipur's Rs 1,000 licence and Rs 5,000 fine, a sale that needs a registration first, pet shops without a register, and nowhere to cremate

Jaipur wrote India's strictest pet registration rule in July 2026, a month after the High Court asked for one.

Jaipur Municipal Corporation made registration mandatory for every pet dog and cat on 22 July 2026 at Rs 1,000 plus GST, with a Rs 500 renewal, a two-month grace period to 30 September, a Rs 5,000 fine for an unregistered animal after that, Rs 2,000 for other breaches and Rs 100 a day to recover an impounded dog, and requires the first anti-rabies dose at three months and a yearly one after; no dog or cat may be sold or handed over until it is registered, a buyer of an animal under three months signs an affidavit to vaccinate it, and every shop, breeder and kennel must register with the Animal Welfare Board and file quarterly records of what it bought and sold. The reports do not say whether the rule is Greater Jaipur's, Heritage Jaipur's or both, and no count of registrations has been published. The fee is twenty times Chennai's Rs 50 and ten times Kolkata's Rs 100, and it is the one rule in this report that followed a court's request within a month: the High Court asked for pet registration with a time-frame and fines on 29 June. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist, and its guide to pets in apartments in India reads the Animal Welfare Board's guideline that residents' associations work under. The Rules require a State Board certificate for every shop that sells an animal and every breeder; the Board's circular of December 2023 recorded that no state had provided its number of registered establishments, Rajasthan has published none, and Jaipur's quarterly records will be the first such register in the state if they are kept. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause.

Native breeds and end of life: none on the register, and nowhere to cremate

No dog breed named for Rajasthan is on ICAR's register of six Indian breeds or on the Kennel Club of India's standard list; the Banjara Hound, kept by the Banjara people, is listed on Bonbeno's report on the register as not registered, and the Rampur Greyhound across the border in Uttar Pradesh has the trials it does not. The dog most of the state shares a road with is the Indian pariah dog. No municipal pet crematorium in Rajasthan could be read; the nearest facilities in Bonbeno's cremation report are in Delhi and Ahmedabad, and its guide to when your pet dies in India covers burial, which in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur is the option.

What a Rajasthan pet owner can do with these numbers

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

1. Register the dog or cat with the corporation, in Jaipur before anything else. Rs 1,000 plus GST, Rs 500 to renew, Rs 5,000 if it is found unregistered; the High Court has asked every city for the same rule.
2. Vaccinate against rabies at three months and every year, and treat every bite the same day. 5.94 lakh people in the state needed the course in 2025-26.
3. Report the dog, not the neighbour. The state helpline 181 takes dog-bite complaints, and each corporation was ordered to publish a number; a lane of unsterilised adult dogs is the fact to give it.
4. 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) and the state's own guidelines.
5. Ask your ward for its feeding site and its sterilisation count. Both are required by the August 2025 guidelines, and a compliance report was due in 30 days; Udaipur publishes its count, and your city can.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that can show its State Board certificate and, in Jaipur, its corporation registration. No register exists; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Plan for burial. No municipal crematorium in the state could be read; Bonbeno's guide covers the steps.

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 nothing else. No state survey has reported, no Jaipur or Jodhpur count has been published since the studies of 2002 and 2007, and Udaipur's 25,000 is the corporation's estimate.
• The three bite series are three instruments. The NRCP series is read from one newspaper report of government figures and its yearly totals were not found in a published state document; the IDSP table is Parliament's; the RTI reply's department and definition are unknown. The dataset carries all three and computes nothing across them.
• Deaths are not counted. The IDSP's 0 and 3 are suspected rabies deaths reported by facilities; the 2018 figure of 185 is deaths caused by stray animals of every kind, read from the High Court's recital of a report this report did not open.
• The 22 pounds are the state's statement at a hearing, as a legal reporter recorded it, not an affidavit this report has read; the Supreme Court's reaction is from the same record.
• The June 2026 order's outcome is unread. The matter was listed for 3 August 2026 and no report of that hearing could be read by 2 November 2026.
• Jaipur's thirty-year figures are the programme's own beyond the two peer-reviewed studies, and the newspaper report that Jaipur's corporation told the High Court it sterilises 800 dogs a month could not be opened and is not used.
• No private clinic layer, no licence count, no pet shop register and no crematorium exist 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 figures from Udaipur Times of 1 November 2025, Reece and Chawla in Veterinary Record 2006, Reece, Chawla and Hiby in Veterinary Record 2013, Totton and others in Preventive Veterinary Medicine 2010 and Help in Suffering's programme page as hosted by WellBeing International.
2. The bite and death figures are from Amar Ujala of 6 June 2026, Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025, News Arena of 22 March 2026, LiveLaw of 2 August 2025, Free Press Journal of 22 July 2026 and the WHO India page.
3. The court and guideline figures are from the High Court's order of 29 June 2026 as published by LiveLaw, the SCC OnLine blog and PTI via The Week on the order of 11 August 2025 The Week, PTI wire, Outlook of 28 August and Patrika of 27 August 2025 Patrika, Jaipur, 'Rajasthan to establish…, Udaipur Times of 15 November 2025, The Print of 21 March 2024, Drishti IAS on the rabies plan, Bar and Bench's record of the Supreme Court hearing of 29 January 2026, the Supreme Court's orders of 22 August and 7 November 2025 as published Supreme Court of India, News On AIR of 19 May 2026, the Animal Birth Control Rules as gazetted, the Lok Sabha reply of 2 December 2025 and the PIB release of 19 August 2025.
4. The veterinary figures are from the Lok Sabha replies of 2 December 2025, 11 February 2025 and 28 March 2023 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the Rajya Sabha annexure on data.gov.in and the Veterinary Council of India's college list.
5. The pet licence figures are from IANS as carried by AP7AM and from Free Press Journal, both of 22 July 2026 Free Press Journal; the pet shop figures from the Pet Shop Rules and the AWBI circular. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 2 November 2026 through Apify runs of Google's India results for 'stray dogs in jaipur' and 'dog bite cases in rajasthan'.