Stray dogs in Bihar, 2026: 6,96,142 counted in 2019, 2,83,274 dog bites in 2024-25 by the state's own survey, 776 a day, Patna district first at 29,280, 34 sterilisation centres and 20,648 dogs sterilised for a state the Supreme Court's amicus put at more than six lakh dogs, a rate that rose from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,550 a dog, and 41.6 percent of government vet posts empty

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

Bihar publishes a bite count by district every year and has never published a count of its dogs. Fifteen rows, from thirteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Bihar's own survey counts 2,83,274 dog bites in 2024-25, about 776 a day, and the state told the Supreme Court it had sterilised 20,648 dogs, a figure the court's amicus called totally insufficient. The rest of this report is about a state whose bite count is published by district and whose dogs have never been counted by anyone with a method.

How many stray dogs Bihar has: 6.96 lakh in the census, a figure nobody can trace, and no survey

Bihar's census count fell by a third while its bites rose, which is not how dogs behave.

Bihar had 6,96,142 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, 32.9 percent fewer than the 10,37,720 of 2012, and 5.8 dogs for every 1,000 people, among the lowest rates of any large state against the national 11.5 National Commission on Population; in 2012 only 4.8 percent were counted in urban areas against 14.6 percent for India, so more than nineteen in twenty were rural, and the 2019 census recorded 85,276 stray cattle. A census that loses a third of a state's dogs in the seven years its dog bites multiply is counting the enumerators' reach, not the dogs, and Bonbeno's street dog report explains why a household census under-reads. The only larger estimate in print, 'between 1.4 million and 2.4 million stray dogs in Bihar', is attributed by Patna Press to a 2025 Animal Husbandry ministry report that this report could not find published anywhere, so it is printed as a press attribution and nothing more; the Supreme Court's amicus worked in January 2026 from 'more than six lakh', which is the census. No Bihar city has published a sight-resight survey of the kind Bengaluru and Mumbai have; in January 2026 the Patna Municipal Corporation asked every hospital to count the dogs on its premises, and Sasaram's corporation told each school to name a teacher to count them. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state stray dog table by 8 November 2026.

Dog bites and rabies: 2,83,274 bites in 2024-25, Patna first at 29,280, and a vaccine that runs out

Bihar's economic survey publishes the series most states hide, and the first two years of it do not fit together.

Bihar's Economic Survey 2025-26 recorded 2,83,274 dog bites in 2024-25 against 2,44,367 in 2023-24, an average of about 776 people bitten every day, and listed dog bites as the state's most prevalent reported disease; the 2023-24 survey had put the count at 9,809 in 2021-22 and 2,07,181 in 2022-23, about 600 a day. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Bihar 1,41,926 bites in 2022, 2,41,827 in 2023, 2,63,930 in 2024 and 34,442 in January 2025, with 1, 3 and 2 suspected rabies deaths, and for 2023 the two series are within 1 percent of each other, which is closer than any other state in this series; the survey counts by financial year and the table by calendar year, so the dataset sets them side by side and does not subtract. On the IDSP figure Bihar recorded 205.2 bites per lakh people in 2024, below the national 265.7 and far below Tamil Nadu's 623 or Kerala's 320, and 37.9 bites for every 100 dogs the census counted. Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the IDSP series for every state.

The districts: Patna 29,280, Aurangabad 467

Patna district recorded the most bites in 2024-25 at 29,280, then East Champaran at 24,452, Nalanda at 19,637, Gopalganj at 18,879 and West Champaran at 17,820, with Jehanabad, Gaya, Bhojpur, Purnea and Vaishali each above 10,000; Aurangabad recorded 467, Khagaria 1,565, Supaul 1,878 and Rohtas 1,967. A sixty-fold spread between Patna and Aurangabad, two districts of comparable population, is a spread in where anti-rabies vaccine is given and recorded, and Jehanabad's 12,900 against Aurangabad's 467 next door makes the point. Patna's New Gardiner Road Hospital alone gives about 100 anti-rabies doses a day, 60 to 70 of them to new patients; in July 2026 the Maharajganj sub-divisional hospital in Siwan had no anti-rabies vaccine for about six days and turned away about a dozen patients on one day. The ICMR estimate for India is 5,726 rabies deaths a year against the 54 the surveillance table recorded in 2024; Bihar's two are a floor no one has tried to lift.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 34 centres, 20,648 dogs, Patna's 11,395 in eleven months, and a rate that rose from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,550

Bihar's sterilisation record is what it told the Supreme Court, and the court did not think it was enough.

Bihar's affidavit to the Supreme Court claimed 34 Animal Birth Control centres where 20,648 dogs had been sterilised, with no daily capacity and no period stated, and 91 dogs held in pounds; the amicus, Gaurav Agarwal, told the bench on 28 January 2026 that 'if there are more than six lakh dogs in the state, sterilisation of 20,648 dogs is totally insufficient', and the state's counsel said 'substantial progress will be made within three months'. The same hearing recorded that Bihar had failed to disclose its daily sterilisation rate or the extent of fencing at institutions, and three months earlier the bench had refused to excuse Bihar's Chief Secretary from appearing in person because of the assembly elections: 'There is Election Commission which would take care. Don't worry. Let the chief secretary come'. At the 70 percent coverage the Centre's July 2025 advisory sets, six lakh dogs need about 4.2 lakh sterilised; 20,648 is 5 percent of that.

Patna: a scheme halted, a tender challenged, a drive that missed its target

Patna's earlier Pashu Mitra scheme, run by the Patna Research and Welfare Centre with the corporation, targeted 30 dogs a day at Rs 1,000 per animal and halted after People for Animals filed a public interest litigation; the corporation's 2023 tender at Rs 1,130 a dog to Santulan Jeev Kalyan of Jaipur was challenged in the Patna High Court by People for Animals as going to an agency 'allegedly blacklisted by other States'. By November 2025 the corporation said nearly 8,000 dogs had been sterilised between 2023 and 2025, required its agency to catch at least 40 dogs a day across all 75 wards, and opened a helpline on the toll-free number 155304. In the eleven months after the drive restarted in September 2025, Patna sterilised 11,395 dogs against a monthly target of 1,200 to 1,400, reaching about 1,000 a month because of opposition in localities including Kidwaipuri, SK Puri, Rajiv Nagar and Rajendra Nagar; caught dogs are held at the Bairia shelter, ear-notched and returned. In February 2026 the corporation said it would mark 75 feeding points, one in each ward. In Bhagalpur the same Jaipur agency was given a two-year work order from 29 July 2026 at Rs 1,550 a dog, so Bihar's per-dog rate has risen 55 percent in three contracts.

What the Centre pays and what the courts ordered

The Animal Welfare Board of India released no ABC grant to any state in 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 or 2024-25; from 2025-26 the revised scheme offers Rs 800 per dog, about half Bhagalpur's rate. The Patna High Court ordered the state in 2023, after 24 stray dogs were shot in Begusarai, 'to frame guidelines for early rehabilitation of stray dogs as well as to prevent their multiplication'; no such guidelines were found published. On 1 November 2025 it disposed of a petition asking for a Patna helpline with a four-hour response and Supreme Court-style shelters, because the Advocate General said the question was before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's order of 22 August 2025 restored release after sterilisation for healthy dogs and confined feeding to designated spots; its order of 7 November 2025 told every local body to fence schools, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and railway stations and move dogs found there to shelters; and on 19 May 2026 it upheld those directions. No Bihar government order implementing them could be read; the corporations' hospital counts and feeding points are the visible response.

Veterinary care: 3,586 vets for 12.9 crore people, 41.6 percent of posts empty, and one college

Bihar has the fewest vets per head of any large state except Jharkhand.

Bihar had 3,586 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 3,439 in 2021, and 860 of its 2,067 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts were vacant in December 2025, 41.6 percent against 25.8 percent for India, the highest vacancy of any state with more than a crore of people after Gujarat. Its 2,730 government institutions are 1,096 hospitals and polyclinics, 39 dispensaries and 1,595 aid centres, and its 307 operational mobile veterinary units cover 0.8 per lakh livestock against the norm of 1.0. With 3,65,40,820 livestock in the 2019 census, the state has 10,190 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, 13,385 per institution against 7,906, and 2.8 vets per lakh people against 6.3, where Kerala has 15.0 and Maharashtra about 8; its one recognised veterinary college has 75 approved seats, so Bihar trains fewer vets a year than Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Rajasthan each train in a single college. 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), none in Bihar, so there is no private clinic layer here for Patna; what a consultation or surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: no published licence, no shop register, no breed, and nowhere to cremate

Bihar's pet rules are the national ones, and the state has published none of its own.

No pet licence fee, portal, fine or count for Patna could be found published by the corporation, which leaves Bihar's pet owners under the national rules alone; a pet dog's bite is a public health event like any other, and on 21 May 2025 a six-year-old boy was mauled to death by a pet dog in Bhojpur district, a month before stray dogs killed a seven-year-old girl in Purnia. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that do 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 count of registered establishments, and Bihar has published none. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause.

Native breeds and end of life: none, and none

No dog breed named for Bihar 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. No civic pet crematorium or burial ground in Bihar could be read; Patna's modern crematorium at Bans Ghat is for people. The nearest facilities in Bonbeno's cremation report are in Kolkata's New Town, which offers burial, and Delhi, and its guide to when your pet dies in India covers burial, which is the option.

What a Bihar pet owner can do with these numbers

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

1. Vaccinate your dog against rabies every year and keep the card. Bihar has no published licence to hold the record for you, so the card is the record; 2,83,274 people were bitten in 2024-25.
2. Treat every bite as urgent and finish the course. If one hospital has no vaccine, as Siwan's did for six days, go to the district hospital the same day.
3. Report the dog, not the neighbour. Patna's toll-free number 155304 takes requests; 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).
5. Ask your ward for its feeding point. Patna said it would mark one in each of its 75 wards.
6. Buy an animal only from a shop or breeder that can show its State Board certificate. No register exists; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Plan for burial. No civic 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 an untraceable estimate. No Bihar city has surveyed its dogs, the 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 8 November 2026, and the 1.4 million to 2.4 million figure's source was not found.
• The survey and IDSP series are different instruments. The survey counts by financial year and the table by calendar year; neither defines a case the same way. The 2021-22 figure of 9,809 is a twentieth of the next year's and is unexplained.
• The survey figures are read from news reports of the survey, Patna Press and PTI, not from the survey document, which could not be opened.
• Deaths are not counted by the state. The IDSP's 1, 3 and 2 are suspected rabies deaths reported by facilities; the survey prints none.
• The 34 centres and 20,648 dogs are the affidavit as the amicus described it in court, not an affidavit this report has read, and they carry no period.
• Patna's helpline landline appears in two versions in the press, so only the toll-free number is printed.
• 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 other estimates from Patna Press of 15 August 2025 and ETV Bharat of 28 January 2026.
2. The bite figures are from PTI via ThePrint of 2 February 2026, Patna Press, Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025, Prabhat Khabar of 31 July 2026 and the WHO India page.
3. The programme and court figures are from ETV Bharat, Dainik Jagran English, Verdictum, Patna Press of 5 November 2025, 31 January and 20 February 2026 Patna Press, 'Patna Municipal Corporation… Patna Press, 'Patna civic body to set up 75…, Prabhat Khabar of 29 July and 3 August 2026 Prabhat Khabar, Bhagalpur, LiveLaw of 19 August and 21 September 2023 LiveLaw, Patna High Court, the Patna High Court's judgment of 1 November 2025, 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.
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 VCI college list.
5. The pet figures are from the Pet Shop Rules, the AWBI circular, PTI via The Week, Patna Press and Deccan Herald. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 8 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results for 'stray dogs in patna' and 'stray dogs in bihar'.