Dog Licence in India 2026: Fees, Fines and Portals by City

Chennai had licensed 78,238 pet owners by 30 July 2026. From October, abandoning one of those microchipped dogs or cats costs the owner ₹10,000, and the chip is how the corporation knows whose pet it was. A dog licence in India used to be a form most owners never filled in. In a few cities it is now how a dog gets home, and how an owner gets fined.

There is no national pet licence. We found no central law that requires one. The Centre told the Rajya Sabha in March 2025 that animal husbandry is a state subject and that dogs are a local-body matter, and the only central registration rules it cited cover pet shops and breeders, not owners.

Every rule below comes from a city corporation or a state’s municipal act. So whether you need a dog licence depends on where you live: Chennai, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Pune, Lucknow and Hyderabad all require one, Bengaluru’s rules are still a draft, and Kolkata has an old rule that is rarely enforced.

Dog licence fees and fines by city (checked 9 October 2026)

City	Fee	Valid for	Fine without one	Cats too?	Apply at
Chennai	₹50	Until the next anti-rabies shot is due	₹5,000	Yes	petservice.gccservices.in
Delhi (MCD)	₹500, new or renewal	Up to 1 year	Late fee ₹100 a month	Dogs only on the portal	mcdonline.nic.in/petmcd
Gurugram	₹500 new, ₹250 renewal	3 years (2023 order); confirm locally	No amount; dog can be seized	Not mentioned	MCG portal or citizen centres
Noida	₹500 a year (2022 policy)	1 year	₹2,000 a month if unsterilised or unvaccinated	Yes	NAPR app (Noida Authority)
Mumbai	From ₹105; renewal raised to ₹700 in 2022	1 year	Dog can be seized	No (BMC guidelines, June 2025)	portal.mcgm.gov.in
Pune (PMC)	₹50 a year or ₹500 for ten years (2024)	1 year, or 10 years paid upfront	Not published	Yes	services.pmc.gov.in
Hyderabad	Free on the MyGHMC app (2024-25)	Not stated	₹1,000 to ₹50,000 (2021)	Dogs	MyGHMC app; Cyberabad and Malkajgiri not announced
Lucknow	₹200 Indian breed, ₹1,000 foreign breed	April to March	₹5,000, plus ₹50 a day late	Yes, ₹500 a year (since Sept 2025)	lmc.up.nic.in or LMC office, Lalbagh
Bengaluru	Draft: ₹500, ₹50 for indies	Draft: 1 year	Not in force	Not confirmed	No notified process yet
Kolkata	₹150 a year (2022 report); Bidhannagar ₹500	1 year	Not found	Not found	Borough office; Bidhannagar online

Where a figure is old or two reports disagree, the table says so. Corporations change fees without much notice, so read the city section before you pay.

Chennai: ₹50 and a microchip

Chennai is the city that took licensing seriously. Online licensing started in August 2023, fines began after the deadline was pushed to 7 December 2025, and inspectors check door to door. The licence costs ₹50. Your vet implants a microchip and enters the chip number and the anti-rabies vaccination on the portal, and GCC says the licence is approved within 24 hours. Microchipping and the rabies shot are free at the corporation’s veterinary centres, which run from 8 am to 3 pm, Monday to Saturday.

You need an address proof as a PDF (Aadhaar, rent agreement or property tax receipt), a photo of the pet and a phone number. The licence runs out when the rabies vaccination does, and the portal sends reminders a month, a week and a day before. Fines run to ₹5,000 for an unlicensed pet and ₹500 if your dog is off the leash in public, and since October 2026 abandoning a licensed pet costs ₹10,000 (approved in September, cut from a proposed ₹25,000), a fine that is waived if you had reported it missing.

Three things changed after a Madras High Court case in November 2025. Muzzles are no longer required for every dog, the cap of four pets per owner went, and a category was added for Indian and mixed-breed dogs. Separately, from 20 December 2025, buying or newly keeping a Pitbull or Rottweiler carries a ₹1 lakh fine. Reports differ on whether existing licences for those breeds can be renewed, so owners should ask the corporation in writing. The helpline is 1913.

Delhi (MCD)

Every pet dog owner in MCD’s area has to register the dog under Section 399 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957. You apply on MCD’s pet dog registration portal with an Aadhaar-linked mobile number, upload an anti-rabies vaccination certificate in MCD’s format, and pay ₹500. Renewal costs the same and the registration lasts up to a year, depending on when the rabies shot was given, with ₹100 added for every month you’re late.

Registered dogs get a brass collar token. In August 2025 MCD had 5,767 dogs registered and 381 applications pending. New Delhi Municipal Council areas register separately with NDMC.

Registration is also your ticket into Delhi’s first dog park at Jangpura, which MCD says will admit only registered, vaccinated dogs when it opens. Our guide to dog parks in India tracks it.

Gurugram and Noida

Gurugram made registration compulsory again in June 2026 after a rise in dog bites. Under the Haryana Municipal Corporation (Registration and Proper Control of Dogs) Bye-laws, 2008, a new registration costs ₹500 and a renewal ₹250. You need ID proof, a recent photo of the dog and a valid rabies vaccination certificate.

Registered dogs wear an ID token. Owners of Pitbulls, Rottweilers, Dogo Argentinos, Cane Corsos, Akitas and mastiff types must leash and muzzle them in public. MCG extended registration to three years in April 2023, and the June 2026 order says only that it must be renewed from time to time, so ask at the citizen facilitation centre. No fine amount has been published; the order says an unregistered dog can be seized.

Noida Authority’s pet policy of November 2022 covers dogs and cats, registered on its pet app. From March 2023 it fines owners ₹10,000 if a pet attacks a person or animal, plus treatment costs, and ₹2,000 a month for an unsterilised or unvaccinated pet dog. The fee is ₹500 a year, renewed every April, under the December 2022 pet policy. The ₹1,000 you may see quoted was the 2021 launch fee. You register on the Noida Authority Pet Registration (NAPR) app, and by August 2025 more than 8,000 pet dogs had been registered.

Mumbai

The BMC licenses dogs under Section 191B of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, and its June 2025 pet guidelines say keeping a dog without a licence is illegal. Apply on portal.mcgm.gov.in under For Citizens, Apply, License, Dog.

You upload an address proof and the vaccination record, each under 2 MB, and the licence arrives by email with no visit to the ward office. The licence fee started at ₹105, and in 2022 annual renewal went from ₹100 to ₹700. Neither those guidelines nor the licence portal give a fee, so these 2022 figures are the latest we have. An unlicensed dog can be seized, and the owner then has three days to claim it and pay what’s due; cats still aren’t covered under the June 2025 guidelines. The BMC helpline for licences is 96358 39888.

Pune

Pune Municipal Corporation licenses both dogs and cats, online at services.pmc.gov.in since November 2022, with online renewal since April 2024. Bring a rabies vaccination certificate, address proof, a photo of the animal, a property tax receipt and a no-objection letter from your housing society. In 2024 PMC put the fee at ₹50 a year or ₹500 paid once for ten years, and an April 2024 report put each renewal at ₹25. We found no 2025 or 2026 update and no published fine, so check the portal.

Few people bother. In July 2024 about 8,000 dogs were licensed in a city estimated to have a lakh or more, and PMC officials have had to warn owners not to pay agents for a licence the corporation issues itself. Pimpri-Chinchwad is a separate corporation: ₹75 a year, and a ₹500 fine for unlicensed pets.

Hyderabad

Hyderabad is a muddle. In December 2021 GHMC said it would fine owners of unregistered dogs anything from ₹1,000 to ₹50,000, charge ₹50 online and give indies a fee remission. Then, in August 2024, it launched free registration on the MyGHMC app. There is also a separate pet portal and an offline form at citizen service centres that asks for a vet certificate and a no-objection letter from your neighbours. The route GHMC itself points to is the MyGHMC app. Registration there has been free since August 2024, and in June 2025 GHMC’s veterinary wing said about 14,000 pets had been licensed.

There is one more complication: on 11 February 2026 the state split GHMC into three bodies, a smaller GHMC for central and south Hyderabad, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation in the west and Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation in the north-east. We found no announcement on how the two new corporations handle pet registration, so if you live in their areas, ask your corporation office. Since June 2025 only licensed dogs are allowed into KBR National Park.

Lucknow, Bengaluru and Kolkata

Lucknow writes a cheaper rate for Indian dogs into its fee table. Its Dog Control Bye-laws of 2003 set ₹200 a year for a desi dog and ₹1,000 for a foreign breed, valid from April to March, with a ₹5,000 fine for an unlicensed dog and ₹50 a day for late renewal. LMC went house to house checking in July 2025. Apply online through lmc.up.nic.in or at the Animal Welfare Officer’s office at the LMC headquarters in Lalbagh.

Since September 2025 Lucknow also licenses pet cats: ₹500 a year and a ₹1,000 fine without one, applied for in person at the Animal Welfare Officer’s office in Bhopal House, next to the LMC headquarters, with Aadhaar and the cat’s vaccination card.

Bengaluru has no licensing rule in force yet. The Greater Bengaluru Authority’s draft rules propose ₹500 a year per dog and ₹50 for Indian or mixed-breed dogs, plus microchipping, sterilisation after a set age and limits on how many dogs a home can keep by its size. As of 16 September 2026 the draft was still waiting to be notified.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation charges ₹150 a year for a dog licence, applied for at your borough office with the vaccination record and a photo. A December 2022 ETV Bharat report found only about 500 of the city’s estimated 40,000 pet dogs registered. We found no newer fee or working online form, so call your borough office before you go. Bidhannagar (Salt Lake) runs its own online pet licence on the municipal corporation’s website: ₹500 per animal a year, valid to 31 March, with a collar number issued.

Does an adopted indie need a licence?

Yes, wherever the city licenses dogs. We found no rule anywhere that exempts adopted or Indian dogs, and the same documents apply: a rabies vaccination record, an address proof and a photo. Some cities go easier on indies. Lucknow charges ₹200 instead of ₹1,000, Bengaluru’s draft proposes ₹50 instead of ₹500, GHMC promised indies a fee remission in 2021, and Chennai added a category for Indian and mixed-breed dogs in 2025.

The paperwork matters more for an adopted street dog than for a pedigree pup, because after the Supreme Court’s August 2025 order on Delhi’s street dogs, People for Animals warned that untagged pets could be reported as strays. Under the same order, anyone adopting a street dog through a municipal body gets a dog that has been tagged first and must keep it off the street.

A licence token on the collar is the quickest proof that a dog has a home. If you are adopting, our guide to adopting a street dog walks through the rest, and the vaccination schedule tells you which shots the licence will ask about.

Licence, KCI papers, microchip: what each one proves

A municipal licence says your dog is yours and is vaccinated against rabies, and that you can be found. It’s a legal record. Kennel Club of India registration is a pedigree record, used for breeding and shows. It proves nothing to your corporation and most adopted indies will never have it.

A microchip is a number under the skin that a scanner reads. In Chennai it is part of the licence and the corporation is fitting scanners in all 40 of its dog-catching vehicles. Elsewhere it’s optional, and it only helps if the number is registered to you and you update it when you move. Keep the vaccination card current, since every licence process asks for it first.

Your housing society and the licence

A housing society will often ask to see the licence. It can’t ban your pet. The Animal Welfare Board of India’s circular of 20 February 2014 says housing societies cannot ban pet dogs, even by changing their bye-laws or by majority vote, and cannot bar them from lifts, charge for lift use, ban them by size or fine owners. In 2025 Maharashtra’s co-operation department told societies to write a pet policy along the same lines. If you are being pushed to give up a dog over a society dispute, read our page on rehoming a dog first.

We last checked every figure on this page on 9 October 2026 and will update it as cities change their rules, Bengaluru first. Changes also go out on our WhatsApp channel, which is linked from our contact page. If your corporation has changed its fee or process, write to us there and send the notice if you have it.