The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has once again made registration of pet dogs mandatory across the city — the latest in a near-identical chain of directives issued over the past four years, even as Gurugram remains Haryana’s worst district for animal-bite cases.
The order, issued by Municipal Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya with immediate effect, requires every pet owner within MCG limits to register their dog and renew the licence periodically. Owners can apply through the online portal or the corporation’s Citizen Facilitation Centres, submitting identity proof, a photograph of the animal and a rabies vaccination certificate.
The directive lays down familiar conditions: dogs must be leashed in public, kept off roads, parks, green belts and markets, and owners are liable for any attack, injury or nuisance. For breeds flagged as dangerous by the Centre’s animal husbandry department — pit bull terrier, Rottweiler, Dogo Argentino, Cane Corso, Akita and mastiffs among them — a muzzle in public is compulsory. Violations, the corporation warned, invite action under the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994, and the Haryana Municipal Corporation (Registration and Control of Dogs) Bye-laws, 2008, with criminal proceedings in serious cases.
What the order does not mention is that almost every element of it has been mandated before — repeatedly, and with little effect. The MCG declared registration compulsory at the end of 2022, threatening fines and detention; extended licence validity to three years in April 2023 to ease compliance; and hired a private agency for door-to-door microchipping in December 2024. A fresh set of guidelines followed in October 2025 to comply with Supreme Court orders on stray dogs.
The compliance record exposes the gap. Only about 2,290 pet dogs were registered with the corporation over the past year, which officials say is only a fraction of the city’s actual pet population, with non-registration heaviest in the very gated and premium societies where pedigree ownership is concentrated.
The repeated re-issuing of the order comes against a sharp public-health backdrop. According to state health department data, Gurugram leads Haryana in animal-bite cases, logging 42,613 in a single recent year — roughly 117 a day. Haryana as a whole crossed 1.43 lakh dog-bite cases annually, with more than 60,000 officially recorded in a single year. The state’s stray dog population was estimated at around 1.8 million in an animal husbandry department study spanning 2019 to 2023. Nationally, dog-bite cases climbed from 21.9 lakh in 2022 to 30.5 lakh in 2023 and 37.1 lakh in 2024, government figures show.
Dahiya has appealed to residents to register their pets on time and follow the rules, calling the move one taken in the wider interest of public safety, sanitation and civic order.
