Karnal

With 15,05,324 people at the 2011 Census, Karnal was the 334th most populous of India's 640 districts and the 5th most populous of Haryana's 21. That is 5.9% of everyone living in Haryana at the time.

Literacy stood at 74.73%, 1.8 points above the national 72.98% — 0.8 points below the Haryana average. That ranked it 265th of 640 districts nationally. The gap between male and female literacy was 15.0 points, 1.3 points below the national gap of 16.3.

The sex ratio was 887 women per 1,000 men (8 above the Haryana figure of 879). Among children aged 0–6 the ratio was 824, 94 below the national 918.

Karnal contained 8 towns — 7 with a municipal body of some kind, and 1 classed as census towns, meaning they met the census's urban test without having one. The largest was Karnal (M Cl), with 2,86,827 people. That put 30.2% of the district in urban areas, 4.7 points below the Haryana share of 34.9%.